Saturday is King’s Plate day at Woodbine, but Canada’s version of the Kentucky Derby isn’t the only major race on tap. The undercard is headlined by the Grade 1 E. P.
Each week a panel of media members, horseplayers, and Breeders’ Cup World Championships officials release a poll tabulating their votes on the nation's top contenders for the 2025 Longines Breeders’ Cup Classic. The rankings are a weekly rating of the top 10 horses in contention and are determined by each voter ranking their top 10 horses with points assigned on a descending 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 basis.
Recent history dictates that when trainer Charlie Appleby ships a racehorse to North America, the runner must be respected. According to Equineline stats, Appleby has won 40 races from 125 starters since the start of 2021 (32%) with 23 Grade 1 wins.
In 2024, nearly 17,000 Thoroughbreds were born in North America, while England and Ireland welcomed a little more than 13,000 foals. Of those, less than half will win a race in their lifetime, while approximately 3% will win a stakes, and an even smaller percentage, less than 1%, will win a graded stakes. Imagine the odds of an English classic and Breeders’ Cup victor foaling a Derby winner who then sires classic and Breeders’ Cup winners of his own?
Carrie Wood yearned for a horse when she was growing up. She used to pore through the Washington Post classified section, circle ads for horses that were for sale, and leave them on her father’s desk.
“I had hopes,” she said. “I had hopes that someday we could have a horse.”
