One thing's for sure. The Breeders' Cup is, at its heart, a breakneck television show, hurtling ever forward without pausing to catch its breath. This leaves terrific stories in the dust, or rendered to snack-sized sound bites, especially when new personalities emerge from the cast of usual suspects.
This year's Cup was no different, but thank goodness there was time allotted at the end of the long second day to fully appreciate the crowning victory of Sovereignty . Hands had been wrung to rags over his sluggish beginning as a 4-year-old and then his bothersome foot in the wake of a magnificent victory in the Whitney Stakes (G1). Even trainer Bill Mott joined the chorus of wondering whether the son of Into Mischief would be the same dominant dude who won three grade 1 races - including two American classics - in 2025 before a fever sent him to the farm.
Turns out, he was, and then some.
As for the all-too-human stars, postrace attention to such riding institutions as Ryan Moore, Flavien Prat, Jose Ortiz, Tyler Gaffalione, and Junior Alvarado can be reduced to Cliffs Notes (although hats off to Ortiz and Gaffalione for bouncing back from painful incidents before the games even began). They won 10 of the 14 Breeders' Cup events, and all are gifts to the sport that keep on giving.
Thank goodness, though, for some new blood.
Juan Jose Hernandez finally had his turn in the Breeders' Cup spotlight after half a dozen second-place finishes, courtesy of that little lightning bolt named Bacio, winner of the Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint (G1T).
At 34, the native of Veracruz, Mexico, is the quiet anchor of the California room—Frankie Dettori christened him "El Capitan"—where he lets his actions speak considerably louder than his smiling demeanor. He hooked up with Bacio at Santa Anita in October of 2025 and has followed him ever since, on to a 2026 campaign with stops at Churchill Downs, Royal Ascot, York, and now Keeneland, winning for fun at every stop along the way.
It should be noted that Hernandez does not linger for attention when he rides Bacio away from home. At Ascot, shortly after they teamed to win the Palace of Holyroodhouse Handicap, the rider was seen boarding a helicopter still wearing his racing silks and toting his tack bag, intent on catching a jet back to California. Neither did he linger after his Breeders' Cup victory Oct. 31, what with a flight to catch at Bluegrass Field and six mounts awaiting his services Nov. 1 at Santa Anita Park, where he is battling for another local title. Time to finally get J.J. his own Wikipedia page.
Saturday's sport also provided a chance for the wider world to appreciate the force of nature known as Kendrick Carmouche, whose work aboard Deterministic over the past year and a half has been flawless. Rarely have the personalities of a horse and his rider meshed with such joyous abandon. Deterministic was a good horse when ridden by others, but under Carmouche he has become one of the foremost modern turf milers under the guidance of first Christophe Clement and now his son, Miguel.
At 42, Kendrick is hardly an overnight sensation, and winning his first Breeders' Cup race in the Mile (G1T) with his best pal won't appreciably change his life. Kendrick will still be Kendrick, though now enjoying an international fan base to call upon. British broadcaster Matt Chapman descended upon Carmouche after Deterministic held safe Notable Speech, who beat them in the Woodbine Mile (G1T), to tell the jockey that he was known as "one of the craziest, coolest jockeys out there," and that he'd just "destroyed us Europeans."
"Y'all stood me up in Canada," Kendrick replied. "But I knew at Keeneland I was gonna turn the tables on y'all. So here it goes ... Deterministiiiic!"
To hear our visiting friends tell it, they're already writing songs about Billy Loughnane, who at 20, is the youngest English jockey champion in more than a century. Hand it to that other Billy from Long Island, son of Mr. & Mrs. Joel, who recorded a little tune in 1973 called "The Ballad of Billy the Kid," which is what they're calling Loughnane on the other side of the pond. Part of the chorus goes like this:
Well, he never traveled heavy/
Yes, he always rode alone/
And he soon put many older guys to shame.
A little on the nose, right? Loughnane made the trip to Kentucky on the coattails of his very special filly, Libertango, hoping he could shed the three pounds required to make her 119-pound assignment for the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint (G1T), the race that led off the first day of the event. He made the weight and then survived a potential disaster on the turn of the 5 1/2-furlong dash to win and ignite the crowd.
Loughnane will continue his freshly minted celebrity over the coming years, no doubt. And Libertango will be far from his only Breeders' Cup triumph. At the same time, his well-publicized struggle to waste away those last, desperate ounces might prompt Breeders' Cup authorities to revise their attitude toward the weights carried in their races.
European horses already have a hill to climb for the Breeders' Cup. It's an uncomfortable secret that the human athletes do as well. The invading jockeys live by a European scale of riding weights that ranges from the upper 120s and into the 130s. The 2-year-old Libertango, for example, had carried 9 stone and 6 in each of her five previous starts. (For those of you keeping score at home, that translates 128 pounds.) Loughnane said he keeps his regular riding weight at 122, which doesn't look like much on his tallish frame.
"It's not really fair to these jocks coming over for the Breeders' Cup," said Terry Meyocks, executive director of the Jockeys' Guild. "We've talked about this before, and there's no good reason the weights can't be raised a little so they don't have to go through what Loughnane went through. James Doyle, one of their top guys, doesn't eat for two days when he comes over here for these races."
Japan's Ryusei Sakai is another jock on the lanky side, although he had no trouble making the 126 pounds assigned to both of his Saturday Breeders' Cup rides. It was expected that Sakai would end the day with a flourish aboard the defending Forever Young in the Classic (G1), but the international star ran well below par. Instead, Sakai became part of Breeders' Cup lore by guiding T O Elvis to a breathtaking score in the Breeders' Cup Sprint (G1) in pretty much a carbon copy of his sudden strike in the Churchill Downs Stakes (G1) this past May.
Now, to be fair, in its previous 42 runnings any number of winners were able to approach and even better the raw time of 1:08.20 laid down by T O Elvis. His hurricane move from far back also echoed some memorable performances.
At Gulfstream Park in 1989, Tom Durkin was busy ringing Safely Kept an apparent winner until Dancing Spree materialized to score from far back along the inside under Angel Cordero. In 1993 at Santa Anita, Cardmania was last down the backstretch under Eddie Delahoussaye, angled out for his run, and got there just in time to nip the fleeing filly, Meafara.
And for a real T O Elvis antecedent, take a look at the 1996 Sprint at Woodbine. That near-white apparition floating along at the back of a strung-out 14-horse field is Lit de Justice. While attention was focused elsewhere, Corey Nakatani found a pathway along the rail and then split horses to finish like "a gray blur" (thank you, Tom) and win going away.
It is human nature for fans and media alike to let the jaw drop over the shiny new thing, and in this case the madness triggered by T O Elvis is justified. He's a big, dark, intimidating 4-year-old colt with a light, flitting stride who separated himself from the others cited above because a) he caught Englishman, perhaps the best sprinter since Groovy to lose the Sprint, b) he runs only once every five or six months and no one can figure out why, and c) he comes from Japan, which continues to be an endless source of fascination for the jaded Western eyes of North American racing.
He's also got a gift of a name, ripe for any number of creative headlines. But for my money, he should be called The Terminator for the ruthless way he steamrolls the best North America has to offer. We can only hope he'll be back.
