Jockey Ryusei Sakai’s bold threat of taking revenge this week — for the 2024 Kentucky Derby bump that Forever Young took from Sierra Leone — seemed to have worked out in the 47th running of the Breeders’ Cup Classic, as Sakai and his mount snatched the victory from Sierra Leone, who ran a very game second in his last race before retiring to stud at Coolmore. Also in his last appearance on the track (before retiring to Coolmore as well) was Sierra Leone’s rival Fierceness, who showed.

The rest of the order of finish was pretty much as expected: Journalism mustered to finish just fourth, Todd Pletcher’s Mindframe managed fifth, along the way besting Baeza, who clocked in at a somewhat disappointing sixth. Bob Baffert’s Nevada Beach never figured in the race and ran seventh, the longshot Antiquarian did what was expected and put in eighth, and the putative speed, ultra-longshot-who-was-intended-to-fade Contrary Thinking, ran dead last.

With the exception of Forever Young, who was a contender but by no means a favorite, and for all the delicate calculation that the surfeit of talent in the field required, the race was not terribly remunerative for the exotics players. Forever Young provided a whisper of relief at $9.00 on the nose to win, Sierra Leone, whose odds had dropped by post time, paid the expected low $4.60 in place, and Fierceness paid $3.40 in show.

brought his gargantuan closing power to the last furlongs of the 47th running of the Breeders’ Cup Classic, and decisively put his stamp in the history books as just the second horse to have won the high-paying feature twice in the half-century of the race. His rival Fierceness, trained by Todd Pletcher, did not muster his best self and finished a dispiriting fifth. The bright, Bob Baffert-trained Nevada Beach placed handily and brought the players who had him a modicum of return relief, having gone off at TK.