Flower Alley on the Outside Looking in

A total of 121 Horses have been pre-entered for the Breeders' Cup World Championships. Pre-entries were due by noon Monday, and the Breeders' Cup racing directors/secretaries panel met yesterday to determine which horses would be allowed to run in the event a race was oversubscribed. The pre-entries were announced at 10 a.m. today.

Each Breeders' Cup race has a maximum field of 14 horses. The top seven Breeders' Cup point earners in each division gain automatic berths, while the remaining seven horses are selected by the panel. Horses not selected into the body of a field are then ranked in order of the panel's preference. If a horse defects from the field, horses fill the vacancy in order of their ranking until entries for the race are taken Nov. 1.

Most notable of the oversubscribed races was the Breeders' Cup Classic – Powered by Dodge (gr. I), which drew 15 pre-entries. Grade I winner Flower Alley, who finished second in last year's Classic, was put on the also-eligible list and will not compete unless another horse is withdrawn from the race before next Wednesday.

Also interesting to note is the future of Lewis Michael, who was pre-entered in both the NetJets Breeders' Cup Mile (gr. IT) and the TVG Breeders' Cup Sprint (gr. I). The 3-year-old Rahy colt was put at the bottom of both also-eligible lists. In the Sprint, he is second of two, while in the Mile, he is the last of four.