Monday Morning Message with Jason Beem Oct. 5, 2026

A good Monday morning to you all! Hope everyone had a good weekend and there was so much going on with all the final Breeders’ Cup preps going on around the country. Some memorable performances in those races but I think for a lot of people the effort by U. S. S. Valor was the standout performance of the weekend. The two-year-old sat in traffic behind the early leader Gaudreau, who beat him this summer in their debut at Saratoga. This time, U. S. S. Valor turned the tables by finding space at the top of the stretch and pulling away to win the Champagne (G1) at Belmont Park with ease. 

It was less than 24 hours after the win that the connections of U. S. S. Valor announced that they wouldn’t be running in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (G1) but would instead be pointing towards a three-year-old campaign that would obviously center around the Kentucky Derby (G1). As expected, the interwebs were all aflutter with the news, and similar to the Triple Crown dates debate, now people are discussing when to run the Breeders’ Cup preps and how far in advance. 

The fact that they announced this so soon after the race strikes me that they obviously knew their plan before this race and that the Juvenile was never on their map. Which is their decision. I’m more curious what this represents, and it’s the continued pointing towards big races and just running less and less. 

When the money up top in the Kentucky Derby and races like that is so big, trainers and owners are going to do whatever they can to be at the absolute peak for that one race. The other thing to consider is how much of this decision is motivated by the new Thoroughbred Championship Series which kicks off next year. Seemingly, one of the goals of that series is to get the top three-year-olds to race longer and more often, but a side effect might be that two-year-olds run less ambitious campaigns than they might otherwise have. But that trend was starting before the TCS was announced. Even Napoleon Solo took that less traveled two-year-old path last year. And it’s hard to debate the decision after he won the Preakness (G1) and made almost $1.7 million as a three-year-old. 

There’s a term in sports that’s come up in recent years called “load management.” I first heard it in the NBA, and it essentially was teams resting their players a fair bit in order to not overuse them and have them ready for the playoffs. Fans complained, of course, because when a team comes to town you want to see their star players. Horse racing has become the ultimate ‘load management’ sport, much more so than the NBA. Our stars often don’t compete against one another and many have meticulously planned out campaigns of a handful of races each season. Many are now skipping major events that in the past almost no trainers in similar situations would have skipped. 

Things change and always will and I see no reason that many of these top barns aren’t going to continue to run less and less with these top horses and point only towards the marquee events. It’s easy to blame them, but it’s also the way tracks have set up their schedules and focus on these huge events. So, it’s playing out how it’s been created. 

Have a great week everyone!