Never televised in primetime and hardly known outside racing circles, the 4-year-old is favored for a grand opening, and grand finale, in Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup.
Outlined against an orange-pink October sky, the horseman rode again. Juan Leyva, the only exercise rider for perhaps the greatest American racehorse of the 21st century, spurred his mount from a trot into a gallop at the five-eighths pole on the Keeneland Race Course backstretch, and was gone.
The sunrise that was painting the eastern sky had not cleared the grandstand, so after a while the only reliable evidence of the steed’s progress was the flickering safety red light on Leyva’s helmet.