For a Breeders' Cup to attract a Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe winner is something special. To have both an Arc winner and the first Triple Crown winner in 37 years is the unprecedented spectacle that will unfold this weekend at picturesque Keeneland Race Course in the heart of Bluegrass Country in Kentucky.
On Saturday afternoon, in back-to-back races, Golden Horn will take the stage first at approximately 4:50 p.m., attempting to become the first Arc winner to capture the $3 million Breeders' Cup Turf.
And yet, to fully understand the intense drama surrounding the 32nd Breeders' Cup, that race will barely attract a ripple of the attention that will be riveted on the World Championships about 45 minutes later, when American Pharoah will close out his Hall of Fame career by facing his greatest challenge in the day's climactic $5 million Breeders' Cup Classic.
"It will be a race for the ages," said Ahmed Zayat, owner of American Pharoah. "But I am always confident in American Pharoah. He breathes a different air than everyone else."
Surely there could not be a more fitting way for the sport's 12th Triple Crown champion to say farewell to the nation of fans he has cultivated in his amazing growth from a hard-luck colt that missed last year's Breeders' Cup Juvenile due to an injury into a champion who dispelled the notion that winning the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes was an impossibility in this day and age.
In his grand finale, American Pharoah will exit stage right in a test worthy of a champion, facing older foes for the first time while becoming the first horse to bid for a "Grand Slam" of the Triple Crown plus the Breeders' Cup Classic.
Foremost among his nine challengers is Beholder, the sport's biggest Distaff star since Zenyatta. Not only did she beat the boys in the Grade 1, $1 million Pacific Classic, she stomped them by 8¼ lengths in the West Coast's premier race for older horses.
Both the daughter of Henny Hughes and the Zayat Stables star possess sharp early speed and the battle between them figures to unfold in the early stages of the mile-and-a-quarter BC Classic. How fast and hard they push -- or don't push -- each other promises to play a crucial role in the outcome, much as it did in the Travers, when Frosted aggressively joined American Pharoah early on and that fierce duel set the stage for Keen Ice to pass both of them in the stretch as the Triple Crown champion finished second.
"This should be a jockey's race," Zayat said, "and the post positions will play a big role in what happens."
In spite of the towering presence of American Pharoah and Beholder, the BC Classic is anything but a match race. The rest of the field includes a collection of horses who have won some of the year's best races.
Honor Code captured the Metropolitan Handicap and Whitney, though he is coming off a sub-par third-place finish in the Kelso Handicap at a mile. Tonalist returned to top form earlier in the month when he triumphed in the $1 million Jockey Club Gold Cup for a second straight year.
Smooth Roller has done little wrong in winning three of his four career starts, highlighted by a decisive, 5¼-length win in the Grade 1 Awesome Again in his last start.
There's also an intriguing European, Gleneagles, the Cartier Champion 2-year-old of 2014 who will race on dirt for the first time.
"Well, it's a great field. I mean, for one, it's got a Triple Crown winner, and we haven't seen one of those in 30 some years. So it couldn't get much tougher than that along with the rest of a field that's very nice. It's exciting to be a part of it," said Richard Mandella, who trains Beholder, a two-time Breeders' Cup winner.
It's a galaxy full of stars, though the brightest of them all is unquestionably American Pharoah, who owns eight wins in 10 career starts with earnings of $5.9 million.
He's the focal point of attention in the race -- and the entire Breeders' Cup for that matter -- and the major question involves how he will bounce back from his loss in the Travers and if trainer Bob Baffert will have the 3-year-old superstar ready for a peak effort in his first race in nine weeks.
Baffert won the BC Classic for the first time last year and did it with Bayern, a 3-year-old. He also had American Pharoah on his "A" game for the Haskell Invitational on Aug. 2 off eight weeks of rest, and the homebred son of Pioneerof the Nile's last few workouts -- 6 furlongs in 1:10 4/5 on Oct. 20 and seven furlongs in 1:23 on Oct. 14, both at Santa Anita -- indicate there's no hangover from his trip to the Spa.
"I think he needed the full 60 days to recover from the Travers," Baffert said. "So I feel that his last couple of works is something that I had to see from him. I don't want to lead him up there [to the Breeders' Cup] unless I know he's going to give me a big effort, so I owe it to him to have him really ready."
Given the superb level of competition, even if American Pharoah is truly on edge for his farewell appearance, he will surely have to work harder than ever before to reach the finish line first. The field for the Classic is that good, which makes all the sense in the world to Baffert.
"There really is some really good horses in there," Baffert said. "It's going to be tough. But that's what the Breeders' Cup is supposed to be. It's supposed to be tough."
How tough remains to be seen. Yet as Baffert, Zayat and jockey Victor Espinoza reach the end of a magical mystery tour to racing immortality on the back of American Pharoah, there's also an understanding that whatever happens on Saturday, it can only enhance the experience. Once you have "Ended a 37-year Triple Crown drought" on your resume, there's no downside.
"I think his legacy is that he's a Triple Crown winner," Baffert said. "I think it's about as much legacy as you can carry. To me winning the Breeders' Cup, it would be like icing [on the cake]. I think just what he went through and the thrill that he gave everybody watching him in those races, I think that's his legacy: 37 years [without a] Triple Crown winner and nobody knew for sure if it would ever happen again. We've seen really good horses just falter there at the end. So I think his legacy has been made. It's a Pharoah tour. You know, you get to see him run and watch him, get close to him and watch him perform."
Yes, there's just one show left before American Pharoah begins the next phase of his life at Coolmore's Ashford Stud. That show will be the Breeders' Cup Classic. In Kentucky, the place where the Triple Crown sweep began on the first Saturday in May.
It has been a majestic journey that will come full circle in a "grand" fashion on the last Saturday in October in "a race for the ages."
A Hollywood scriptwriter could not have envisioned a better ending.