Horses descend on the Breeders' Cup from all over the world, but none had a trip to California as improbable or rewarding as Hardest Core's.
A 4-year-old gelding, Hardest Core won the Arlington Million in August and surely belongs with a top-class international field in the $3 million Breeders' Cup Turf.
Yet if you mentioned "Breeders' Cup" to trainer Eddie Graham at the start of the year, the comment would have generated far more chuckles than nods of approval.
The tale of Hardest Core involves the unlikely saga of a Thoroughbred who nearly died after an minor operation earlier in the year; who has a small-time trainer that entered the year with just 22 career wins and was best known for his work with steeplechasers; whose jockey, Eriluis Vaz, teamed with him to recorded his first stakes win in an 11-year riding career; who is one of just two horses owned by 30-year-old Andrew Bentley, a young man born with the genetic disorder Down syndrome; and who has just so happened to triumph in one of the world's most famous turf stakes.
Yes, in the sport of kings and financial barons, Hardest Core has risen from obscurity to give Graham and the Bentley family the ride of their lives.
"The whole experience has been pretty overwhelming." said Graham, who has just six horses in his stable. "There's no way I thought this could happen. I'm mostly a steeplechase trainer. A guy with a small stable like me never gets an opportunity like this. It's like a dream for me."
And yet, on Saturday, Hardest Core will be matched against Europeans like Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe runner-up Flintshire, Telescope and Brown Panther and leading American hopefuls Main Sequence, Twilight Eclipse and Imagining, and he fits in rather nicely with them.
His morning-line price may be 10-1, but at this point a victory would be far less surprising than the turn of events that brought him to Santa Anita for this weekend's world championships.
It all started back in November when Graham noticed that trainer Kiaran McLaughlin had entered Hardest Core in a Keeneland sale. The son of Hard Spun had already shown promise in his career, winning two allowance races and finishing second by a neck in a $100,000 turf stakes at Saratoga. A friend, Rusty Carrier, had first alerted Graham to Hardest Core, and when the opportunity presented itself to buy the horse, Graham contacted Greg Bentley.
Bentley, the CEO of Bentley Systems, a software solutions business in Exton, Pennsylvania, had owned horses for several years and decided to buy a horse as a 30th birthday present for his son, Andrew, who had developed love of horses and a passion for the sport.
With Bentley as the majority owner, Graham's bid of $210,000 secured Hardest Core for Bentley and Carrier.
Graham gave his new acquisition the rest of the winter off and then decided to have him gelded so he would be better focused on running. The procedure is relatively simple and immediately after it, all seemed well with Hardest Core.
The next day, some 20 minutes after Graham turned him out for some exercise, the trainer saw that a distressed Hardest Core had fallen to the ground.
"It looked like he had colic, but when I got out there I saw his intestines were coming out," Graham said. "He was in so much pain, we couldn't get him up to take him to the hospital. He looked like a horse at the end, but then suddenly, he just popped up and when he did, we put him in the trailer and took him to the New Bolton Center."
Fortunately New Bolton was just 10 minutes away, and Hardest Core received emergency treatment from Dr. Louise Southwood, who removed 18 feet of the horse's intestines during three hours of emergency surgery for what was sparked by a hernia.
"More than ever I was glad that we gelded him," said Graham, who pointed out that motoring Hardest Core after he was gelded allowed him to spot the distressed horse earlier than he would have under normal circumstances. "The hernia was a time bomb waiting to happen." Hardest Core made a smooth recovery and made his debut for his new connections in a June 28 allowance race on the turf at Parx, which he won by three lengths.
Next came a three-length win in the $50,000 mile and a half Cape Henlopen Stakes at Delaware Park, which Hardest Core won so easily that it convinced Graham to target either the $500,000 Sword Dancer at Saratoga, the $400,000 American St. Leger or the aptly named $1 million Arlington Million for Hardest Core. With the Million and American St. Leger contested on the same day at Arlington Park, Graham entered his horse in both of them and then elected to shoot for the moon and try the Million.
"People say you go with your gut, and my gut feeling and the owners' gut feeling was to run in the Million," Graham said. "Everyone said there's something telling us to go there so let's take a chance."
Hardest Core had to face 2013 Breeders' Cup Turf winner Magician in the Million, but in the final furlong of the mile-and-a-quarter stakes all of the long, stamina-building gallops Graham put into Hardest Core came to the fore. He surged past Magician and the early leader Side Glance to notch a one-length triumph over Magician for the kind of win that seemed far too lofty for anyone associated with the horse.
"It was a shock for me," Graham said about his initial graded stakes win. "Most people can't feel what I felt because I'm just a little guy in this business. Little trainers like me dream of something like that, but never get the opportunity to have such a good horse. It was the greatest thing for trainers like me. We get goose bumps watching the big races but we never train horses good enough to be in them, even though we're good enough to do it." As ecstatic as Graham may have been, no seemed to relish the Million victory more than Andrew Bentley, who beamed as he accepted the winner's trophy from famed Chicago Bears coach and player Mike Ditka.
"Among our four children, Andrew is the one who has most loved racing," Greg Bentley said.
"Steeplechase meets are wholesome family outings and everyone gets to know everyone else, which really suits his outgoing personality. Andrew also particularly loves names, and can remember most of the horses we've ever run against. He needs the program book in his hands as soon as we get to a race venue so that he can know everything about the horses he studies in the paddock. It is fun for all of us to take the lead from Andrew, who does what he says: 'don't get nervous, just get excited.'
"Andrew is so naturally upbeat all the time," Greg added, "that there must be a particular affinity with the likewise overachieving Hardest Core. I will say that Caroline and I never had quite this degree of "racing luck" when our horses were in MY name, so we're glad Andrew is bringing us along now. We made an enjoyable family project of Andrew's colors for his racing silks. He chose the colors and the design, working with our daughter, Merrie, who's a professional illustrator. We find horse racing to be an appealing and absorbing family undertaking and are glad to encourage others to join in. I think Andrew is a great ambassador for us, Hardest Core, and the sport."
Now comes the Breeders' Cup, and a chance for Graham to attend the event for the very first time. The field will be tougher, but the longer mile and a half distance should benefit a flat runner who trains like a hurdler.
Not that a life over the jumps is out of the question for Hardest Core. Graham says at some point Hardest Core will be converted into a jumper.
But that's for much later. For now there are even more impossible dreams that may be realized on Saturday at Santa Anita.
And don't let the toteboard fool you. After all that Hardest Core, Graham and the Bentleys have been through in the last year, even a 50-1 price would be a very minor obstacle.