2010 Breeders' Cup Classic: Super Saver is out

In what has become a weekly routine, another horse will miss this year's Breeders' Cup due to injury.  2010 Kentucky Derby winner Super Saver is suffering from bone bruising and will be given 60 days of rest before he is re-evaluated (DRF.com: Super Saver gets stall rest for bone bruising).  Earlier this summer it was announced that Belmont Stakes winner Drosselmeyer will also miss the Classic due to an injury.

With the news that Super Saver is on-the-shelf, I decided to look back on the previous ten years of results in the Triple Crown series and see how many of the previous winners ended up running in the Breeders' Cup Classic that fall (see table below).  Including this year, there have been 27 unique winners of a Triple Crown race since 2000, with Big Brown, Alfeet Alex, Smarty Jones, Funny Cide, War Emblem, and Point Given all repeat winners.  Of those twenty-four horses, ten have gone on to run in the Classic (assuming Lookin At Lucky starts in this year's race), with Curlin being the only horse to win the race during that time frame. 

Right now Lookin At Lucky is the only hope that a winner of a Triple Crown race will run in this year's Classic, which is pretty much in line with what we've seen over the last ten years.

From my perspective, 2007 was probably the best three year old crop in recent memory in terms of depth and durability.  The 2007 Classic featured the Derby winner (Street Sense), the Preakness winner (Curlin), as well as Hard Spun, Any Given Saturday, and Tiago.  The older horse division, however, was as weak as the three year olds were strong with Awesome Gem, Lawyer Ron, and Diamond Stripes the lone older North American horses to run in that Classic. The ill-fated European runner, George Washington (IRE), was the only other non-three year old to run in the 2007 Classic.