A Profile Of Heavy Favorite Flightline

The Kentucky-bred Flightline, sired by Tapit (whose sons and daughters are racing into the record books), is arguably the best-kept open secret in American racing. He may also be the best horse racing in America now. If those statements seem oxymoronic, it’s because they are. Put a different way, Flightline is anything but a typical four-year-old because he never really got to be introduced to America as a three-year-old.

There are quite a slew of reasons for that, and to parse those will help us understand what it means for Flightline’s potential competitors that trainer John Sadler and Flightline’s longtime champion jockey Flavien Prat are pointing their charge at the $6-million Breeders’ Cup Classic this November 5 at Keeneland. For the moment, Flightline is turning in his usual blazing fractions for the ultra-careful veteran trainer Sadler out at their home base in Arcadia, California.

There are a couple of forces at work on Flightline, chief among them being the horse’s amazing athleticism and his ability to come back against overwhelming obstacles — some of which he manages to arrange against himself — to win his races so decisively. The second force at work on Flightline is his own ebullient spirit. The horse cannot help himself. In his sophmore year — in other words, late in 2020, as he was on the cusp of competing against his class in 2021’s Triple Crown — Flightline suffered a barn accident that resulted in a deep gash into the muscle of his right hindquarters. No one saw the accident, but it’s forensically assumed he reared up and cut himself on some hardware. The wound took a long time to heal, with the result that Sadler held him back from those 2021 races. He sensed he had something special, and he was right.

A few mind-boggling facts: Flightline is four. To say that he is lightly raced is an understatement. He has had a total of five starts, the first three of which he won by 37 lengths. His first race this year, the fourth race of his life, was the Hill ‘N’ Dale Metropolitan at Belmont this June, which he won by six lengths. Three weeks ago he was given his fifth lifetime start — all under Flavien Prat — in the September 9 Pacific Classic, during which he returned to his Secretariat-like form and won by almost twenty lengths. In all, it’s calculated that he’s won his five races by some 62-plus lengths.

At the end of that race Prat said: “When we went into the final turn, he was traveling so well I asked him to pick it up a little bit,” Prat said. “As soon as I looked back and saw how far in front he was, I wrapped up on him. Obviously, this is the best horse I ever rode.”