They play American football where Hollywood Park racecourse once stood, the 70,000-seat SoFi stadium being home to both the Los Angeles Rams and LA Raiders.
But 40 years ago at the site in Inglewood, three miles from Los Angeles International Airport, racing history was made with the first running of the Breeders’ Cup.
A crowd of over 64,000, sprinkled among them Hollywood royalty including Frank Sinatra, Gregory Peck, Cary Grant and Fred Astaire, watched the seven-race card with $10 million up for grabs.
The winners included trainer John Gosden (right), then based in the US, who landed the first running of the $1m Turf Mile with Robert Sangster-owned Royal Heroine.
Gosden remembered a sense of sporting history being made, saying: “Everyone found it an exciting concept, there was a great build up and the racing did not disappoint.
“It was a great location and there was a huge crowd to the extent that they ran out of food. The Classic itself was a phenomenal race, a three-way photo-finish [won by Wild Again]. It was a great opening chapter.”
Only a handful of British-based trainers were represented in California on November 10, 1984.
The Bill O’Gorman-trained Reesh, ridden by Tony Ives, was the first UK runner, finishing last of 11 runners in the Dirt Sprint.
Guy Harwood and Barry Hills also had unplaced runners but the victory to encourage the Europeans was delivered in the $2m Turf by the Alain de Royer-Dupre-trained Lashkari in the hands of Yves Saint-Martin.
The iconic moments that have followed include the Pat Eddery-ridden, Clive Brittain-trained Pebbles squeezing up the inside rail at New York track Aqueduct 12 months later to win the Turf and give Britain its first Breeders’ Cup victory.
The image of Francois Boutin-trained Arazi slicing through opponents to spectacularly land the 1991 Juvenile at Churchill Downs endures as do memories of the three consecutive wins in the Mile for brilliant mare Goldikova from 2008.
Most memorable of all is arguably 54-year-old Lester Piggott winning the 1990 Turf Mile at Belmont Park on the Vincent O’Brien-trained Royal Academy, 12 days after coming out of retirement.
Such iconic moments are why the event was created – perhaps Coolmore’s City Of Troy will etch his name into Breeders’ Cup history when he takes his chance in the Classic next month.
In 2007 the meeting expanded to its current two-day format and when it is staged over November 1-2 at Del Mar in southern California, there will be 12 races and $34m in purses.
In the intervening years, new lavishly-funded fixtures have been launched, like the Dubai World Cup and the Saudi Cup, but they all owe a debt to the Breeders’ Cup, which accelerated the advance of global competition.
Gosden says: “The first person [to promote international racing] was John Schapiro at Laurel Park, who ran the Washington International [from 1952].
“That was the beginning of it, but you would have to say that the Breeders’ Cup took it from the embryonic stage and truly expanded it.
“To that extent it was ground-breaking and energised the concept of international racing and breeding.”
The original idea for a showpiece meeting that would move between different US tracks each year had come from the late John Gaines.
Gaines, whose family fortune had been amassed in both the pet food business and Florida real estate market, had turned Gainesway Farm into a breeding giant, going from zero to 50 stallions in two decades.
His vision was a year-ending championship, bringing together US champions who had previously protected their reputations by sticking to their own respective corners of America, as well as runners from Europe.
Initially there were obstructions, but the arguments were won, although the price paid by Gaines, an innovative yet polarising figure, was that he had to resign from the event’s Board of Directors to make sure it happened.
Dora Delgado (left), the Breeders’ Cup Executive Vice President and Chief Racing Officer, has seen it all unfold, having joined the organisation in 1983.
Delgado recalls: “Mr Gaines, along with some prominent Kentucky owners and breeders, thought what racing really needed was our own Super Bowl or World Series.
“That would culminate with horses which had never met but might be champions in their respective regions battling it out to determine who really was the best.
“Key was a ground-breaking deal with NBC to broadcast the whole day live, something that had not been done before.
“It drew a worldwide audience to the Breeders’ Cup and thoroughbred racing. It set the stage for where we are now, and it has been an ever-evolving championship which has got bigger and better.
“There was probably a little push-back from various racing organisations that had Fall meets, which thought the Breeders’ Cup would pull their best horses away.
“It definitely changed the landscape of racing in America. The racing programmes have had to adapt because of what trainers have been asking for. Once you start offering that kind of money it is difficult to stay home in your own back yard.”
Originally it was proposed that US stallion owners pay an annual stud fee to make progeny Breeders’ Cup-eligible plus a fee per foal.
But US breeders wanted more bang for their buck, not just a single day’s annual championship.
The initial solution was almost 400 Premium races across the US, which offered additional money for Breeders’ Cup-nominated horses.
That morphed into the current Breeders’ Cup Challenge programme with its series of ‘win-and-you’re-in’ races, which guarantees a starting berth in a Breeders’ Cup race.
Delgado says: “There was no connectivity between running in a Breeders Cup Premium award race to the championships and we wanted to make sure we were drawing a line from these races to the championships.”
The Challenge races have extended the international pull of the Breeders’ Cup, with Delgado estimating that Japan, which enjoyed its first successes at the meeting in 2021, could have up to a dozen runners at this year’s meeting.
The amount paid now by US stallion owners depends on how many live foals they produce – for 100 or more foals it is two times the annual stud fee – simply because average book sizes have grown so much since the meeting was first conceived.
For European-based owners and breeders, a fundamental change came in 2010 when the Breeders’ Cup ended a cross-registration agreement of sires with the European Breeders’ Fund and ended the $500 foal registration fee.
Delgado continues: “People were hesitant to nominate a European-bred foal because you never knew if it would wind up at the Breeders’ Cup three years later.
“We were getting 1,200 to 1,500 Europeans nominated a year, but they inevitably wound up not being the horses that came to the championships who had to pay high supplementary fees. It was a detriment to participation.
‘’It was a sea-change once we removed the impediment of a high supplementary fee. It has greatly impacted our numbers and elevated the international aspect of the programme.
“We went from having 1,200 internationals nominated to over 25,000 automatically eligible.”
Now there is simply an annual payment of 50 per cent of their fee for northern hemisphere stallions based outside the US and 25 per cent for southern hemisphere-based stallions.
Travel allowances of $40,000 for overseas contenders and $10,000 for out-of-state runners are among the packages on offer at the Breeders’ Cup, which has a dedicated concierge team to help deliver a premium experience for owners.
The Breeders’ Cup has been a leader in the US in improving equine safety and welfare
Quarantine procedures have developed, subsequently adopted by other racing jurisdictions.
“If you want to have international competition you have to make sure you make it as easy as possible for the horses,” Delgado explains. “We built facilities at tracks to handle international horses so they don’t have to go to a government facility to clear quarantine. That means a minimum amount of time in the barn. It has encouraged other countries.”
The Breeders’ Cup has been a leader in the US in improving equine safety and welfare, most notably the 2021 move to ban all raceday medication from its races, including anti-bleeding medication Lasix.
“We didn’t want to lose America’s race stature by continuing down the path that medications were allowed on raceday,” says Delgado, who believes the Breeders’ Cup’s use of new technology in its screening programmes will continue to make the sport safer.
Such innovations will help the Breeders’ Cup retains its position in the international racing calendar.
The meeting will be staged at Del Mar for the next two years but the $455m redevelopment of Belmont Park, including a new grandstand, should ensure the Breeders’ Cup will return to the New York track in 2027, the first time it has been hosted in the Big Apple since 2005.
Delgado adds: “I believe by 2027 we’ll be back in New York. They are putting together a proposal now.
“We have not been there since we moved to a two-day format. When we return with a new facility the Europeans will turn up in droves and I think it will be a record-selling event.”
