Be it a cap giveaway at a Padres game or food samples at Costco, people love free stuff.

It’s no different for owners in horse racing, and no one knows that better than Dora Delgado, Breeders’ Cup senior vice president of racing and nominations.

Ten years ago, the world’s largest horse racing event started a “Win and You’re In” program that awards winners of designated Challenge Series races automatic entry into the Breeders’ Cup.

Delgado calls it the “golden ticket.”


Included in that prize is that the owners don’t have to pay the race entry fee, which can run in the tens of thousands of dollars. Add onto that the Breeders’ Cup will pay $10,000 for an out-of-state horse to ship, and $40,000 in travel for an international horse (no matter if you’ve won a race), and horsemen find the prospect highly alluring.

“You’ve got a free ride, and it’s made a real connection with the trainers and owners,” Delgado said on the phone this week from her office in Lexington, Ky. “They’ve loved the whole ‘free’ aspect. We’ve added a lot of money to the purses, but at the end of the day what we give away for free, or what is perceived as a free benefit, has really made a big difference.”

In advance of the first Breeders’ Cup to be held at Del Mar on Nov. 3-4, 81 “Win and You’re In” races are being staged this year in 13 countries, including five during the Del Mar summer meet. The first two are scheduled for this weekend – the Bing Crosby Stakes on Saturday and the Clement L. Hirsch Stakes for fillies and mares Sunday.

Each qualifying race has a designated Breeders’ Cup event, so the Crosby runners, competing at 6 furlongs, are looking to make the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, and the runners in the 1 1/16-mile Hirsch are vying for a spot in the Distaff. (Drefong, last year’s Sprint winner, is entered in the Crosby.)


Of course, Del Mar’s jewel event is the TVG Pacific Classic on Aug. 19, with the champion getting into the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Horsemen love the Challenge races.

“I could have 125 of them and it wouldn’t be enough,” Delgado said.

In last year’s Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita, 43 of the 150 horses who competed in the 13 races came out of the Challenge Series program – the second-highest total in the program’s history. Two of them won – Classic Empire in the Juvenile and Highland Reel in the Turf.


“Domestically, with the exception of horses that are possibly injured or retired, every single one of the Challenge winners comes to the Breeders’ Cup,” said Delgado. “Unless a horse has got a problem, you’re going to be there.”

Getting international horses is more of an issue because of the costs, which is why the Breeders’ Cup offers the $40,000 supplement for travel. In recent years, the event has moved its focus from Europe to countries such as Japan, South Africa, Australia and Chile.

Fans might think it’s easy to fill the fields in an event that is considered the two-day Super Bowl of racing, but that’s not the case. A full Breeders’ Cup field is 14 horses, and last year only three races had that many horses. The fewest was seven in the Distaff and Sprint.

“We always says it’s pretty easy to get the first 10 horses in a race,” Delgado said. “Sometimes it’s the next four that’s like pulling teeth. There is a limited inventory of really good Grade I horses at the end of the year. They’ve already had tough campaigns, and to keep the wheels on, as it were, until November is tough.”


Generally, Delgado said, the first seven horses in each Breeders’ Cup race are determined by the Challenge Series winners or points acquired through graded stakes performances. After that, a committee of race directors – think College Football Bowl Selection Committee of horse racing – considers the nominated horses and chooses those who they think are deserving.

Delgado points out another benefit of the Challenge program to the industry as a whole. The Breeders’ Cup is buying 18 hours of time on NBC and NBCSN this year to feature Challenge races, providing the most television exposure for the sport beyond the Triple Crown races.

That schedule includes the Pacific Classic being televised on NBCSN.

“That’s a real benefit to our tracks who have gotten out of paying for television,” Delgado said. “The Breeders’ Cup has stepped in to fill that void, and we’re going to keep doing that.”


For this first Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar, Delgado is intrigued by how the entries will shape up. She said owners and trainers from the East Coast and Midwest have mostly overcome their concerns about a West Coast bias because of their experiences at Santa Anita, and her staff has even produced evidence that horses from the East have fared better in California than local horses.

“It’s an interesting thing in the U.S. racing community,” Delgado said. “it divides itself so thoroughly on the Saratoga-Del Mar fault line (in the summer). There’s not a lot of crossover.

“Some of our East Coast or Midwest trainers are unfamiliar with Del Mar. They don’t know the track or the facilities. They’ve been at Santa Anita for so long that it’s comfortable for them.”

Delgago compares the education of horse people about Del Mar to that of talking to them about Keeneland (Ky.) when it hosted in 2015.


Still, she said, “I don’t think Del Mar presents much of a problem. In talking to people, I think the experience of ‘where the surf meets the turf’ is going to be so novel, especially for Europeans. They might try to come and experience the coastal atmosphere earlier than they would have otherwise.”

Among the challenges will be that Del Mar’s hosting comes at the beginning of the fall meeting.

“We’re normally running at the end of a meet,” Delgado said. “The horses have time to get to the track, train on the track. The timing is a little bit accelerated here.”

Win and You’re In


The schedule of “Win and You’re In” Breeders’ Cup Challenge Series races at Del Mar. Breeders’ Cup race for which they’re qualifying is in parenthesis:

Saturday, Bing Crosby Stakes, 6 furlongs (TwinSpires Sprint)

Sunday, Clement L. Hirsch Stakes, 1 1/16 miles (Longines Distaff)

Aug. 19, TVG Pacific Classic 1¼ miles (Classic)


Aug. 19, Del Mar Handicap, 1 3/8 miles turf (Longines Turf)

Aug. 26, Pat O’Brien Stakes, 7 furlongs (Las Vegas Dirt Mile)


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tod.leonard@sduniontribune.com; Twitter: @sdutleonard