Tom Pedulla offers takeaways from a huge Labor Day racing weekend highlighted by a pair of $1 million races, the FanDuel Racing Pacific Classic Stakes Saturday at Del Mar and the Jockey Club Gold Cup Stakes Sunday at Saratoga Race Course. Both provided the winners with automatic, fees-paid berths in the $7 million Longines Breeders’ Cup Classic Nov. 2 at Del Mar. The stakes-studded weekend concluded with the Grade 1 Hopeful Stakes at Saratoga, a key race for 2-year-olds who often go on to be Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve prospects.

Highland Falls winning Jockey Club Gold Cup. (Eclipse Sportswire)

DECIDEDLY UNDECIDED: Although Highland Falls locked up a spot in the Breeders’ Cup Classic starting gate with an impressive four-length score in the Jockey Club Gold Cup for his first Grade 1 victory, it is unclear whether he will go on to that season-culminating race. Trainer Brad Cox said the Godolphin homebred, a 4-year-old son of Curlin, would be shipped to Churchill Downs with the Classic “in play.” He also noted that the colt has been campaigned steadily since last August. “We’ll let him tell us,” Cox said. Despite a disappointing fifth-place finish for beaten odds-on favorite Arthur's Ride, Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott said the Whitney Stakes winner will continue to be pointed toward the Classic.

HUGE UPSET: One of the great aspects of racing is its wild unpredictability. There was no way to predict that Calumet Farm’s Mixto, a winner of one of his previous 13 starts, would be good enough to bring home a race as prestigious as the Pacific Classic. And yet that is what happened. The 4-year-old Good Magic colt, patiently ridden in a perfect stalking position by Kyle Frey, snagged the biggest prize of Del Mar’s summer meet by half a length despite being sent off at 22.20-1. Trainer Doug O’Neill might have been among the few who was not shocked. “He gave us a few hints of being a special horse, but [Saturday] he really validated the horse he is,” he said. Mixto produced a pair of runner-up efforts and four third-place efforts before his Pacific Classic stunner.

Three-peat for Gold Phoenix (Eclipse Sportswire)

BIG NUMBERS: Flanagan Racing’s Chancer McPatrick put the exclamation point on a tremendous Saratoga meet for trainer Chad Brown and jockey Flavien Prat by closing powerfully to edge Ferocious by half a length in the Grade 1 Hopeful on Labor Day. Brown closed with a meet-leading 45 wins, six of them Grade 1s. “It’s just a magical meet. It’s a meet for the ages,” he said. “I don’t know how myself or anyone else could replicate this.” While Irad Ortiz Jr. successfully defended his title as leading rider, Prat distinguished himself by amassing 18 stakes wins, 14 of them graded, to set records in both categories.

WORTH THE TRIP: Bellum Justum came for the money and got it, besting Carson’s Run by 2 ¼ lengths in the $2,337,160 DK Horse Nashville Derby Invitational Saturday at Kentucky Downs. Adrian Beaumont of the International Racing Bureau, who recruits international runners on behalf of the track’s boutique meet, looks for the outcome of the 1 5/16-mile contest with Frankie Dettori aboard to help attract future overseas stars. “This is going to be a massive win back home,” Beaumont said. “Hopefully, it will open the floodgates for more coming here next year with horses as good as this or better.”

THREEPEAT: On Saturday, Gold Phoenix made it three in a row in the Grade 2 Del Mar Handicap Presented by the Japan Racing Association when he overtook pace-setting Dicey Mo Chara by a head. In doing so, the 6-year-old gelding secured a fees-paid berth in the $5 million Longines Breeders’ Cup Turf for owners Little Red Feather Racing, Sterling Stables, and Marsha Naify. He will aim to make his third consecutive appearance in the Turf following 10th- and fourth-place finishes. Trainer Phil D’Amato could not be more pleased with Gold Phoenix’s consistency. “I think a big key to this is us doing right by the horse every year. After Breeders’ Cup, we give him a nice couple of months off and I think that prepares him to be prime when Breeders’ Cup comes around again. … We save him for the big dance at the end of the year.”