John Sadler Faces Breeders' Cup Query Head On

John Sadler waits for the question to come, patiently and without a trace of bitterness. He's been hit with it enough times that whatever sting it might carry doesn't even cause him to flinch. When it does land, he deflects it with Teflon-level efficiency.

He knows full well what his Breeders' Cup record is—0-for-41, for those who have missed the memo—and he knows the perception is that his stock drops whenever he ships his charges away from his California base. It explains why he can arrive at the Breeders' Cup at Churchill Downs with a four-time grade 1 winner who is a neck from being unbeaten this year and have to hear all about how this year's $6 million Classic (G1) is considered wide-open. But for a man with such a large albatross supposedly draped around his neck, Sadler has displayed a decidedly light demeanor during his time in Louisville, Ky.

Chalk up his pleasant ways to his class and the fact races are run on the track and not over past pitfalls. Because when you evaluate his main Breeders' Cup hopefuls this year strictly on their merit, the odds actually look pretty good that a Sadler trainee will collect some hardware.

With Dirt Mile (G1) favorite Catalina Cruiser, he has an unbeaten budding star who has won his four starts by a combined 18 1/2 lengths. While Accelerate  may be a tepid 5-2 morning-line choice for the Classic, the son of Lookin At Lucky  has actually been far and away the most superior handicap horse in training this season. He boasts four top-level wins, three of which have come at the Classic's 1 1/4-mile distance, including the 12 1/2-length drubbing he uncorked in the Aug. 18 $1 Million TVG Pacific Classic Stakes (G1).

Still, they say, that record. It may not weigh on Sadler openly, but it's been thrown in his face enough times that he braces for it now. He handles it with the same aplomb he does his barn—with patience, thoughtful analysis, and the belief in the methods that have made him good enough to repeatedly be put in this position.

"I'm not really thinking about it," Sadler said of his Breeders' Cup struggle. "I'm thinking about being in the moment and doing the process this week. These are nice horses, and they've got nice records, all of them. So we're just going to take them over there and see what happens.

"The fact that we're here a lot means that we're getting young horses, and we're developing them into stakes winners. It's good that we're here a lot. That means we've won a lot of really good races."

Here is a sampling of the accolades Sadler-trained runners have grabbed in the 40 years he has been operating his own stable—151 graded stakes wins, practically every grade 1 prize on the West Coast, an Eclipse Award courtesy of 2015 champion 3-year-old filly Stellar Wind. It takes some skill to share a circuit with Bob Baffert, Doug O'Neill, and Jerry Hollendorfer and have multiple meet titles filling up the résumé, but Sadler's presence casts a lengthy shadow in its own right.

What he doesn't have is a win in the races that consume the sport—the Triple Crown and Breeders' Cup—but he has only taken modest swings at the Kentucky Derby (G1), where he's saddled just four starters. He understands the racing community puts a majority of its focus on those tests. That doesn't change the fact that one of the biggest no-nos in his barn is letting outside factors and pressures dictate what is best for those he is trying to do right by.

"I remember when (multiple grade 1 winner) Lady of Shamrock was winning all these back-to-back stakes races, and I'm planning a schedule for her, and John tore it up and said, 'We don't make schedules for the horses. The horses make the schedules for us,'" said Kosta Hronis, who operates Hronis Racing—owner of Accelerate and Catalina Cruiser—along with his brother, Pete. "So I learned at a very early start … let them grow up, let them develop. They'll tell us when they're ready."

Hronis remembers eight years ago when Sadler's name was suggested to him and his brother as one they should seek out if they were serious about becoming Thoroughbred owners. One of the first things he recalled thinking was that there was no chance a trainer of that stature would waste his wisdom on a pair of neophytes.

"At that time, John Sadler had Jenny Craig and Ike and Dawn Thrash, and he had some really fancy clients. And I thought there is no way he's going to want to mess with a couple guys from the Valley that want to claim a horse," said Hronis, president of Hronis, Inc, one of the largest growers of table grapes in California's Central Valley. "But the horse racing business was a little slow at that time, so I think there was a spot and … I think John interviewed us more than we interviewed John. To me, he was kind of out of our reach for someone new in the business. But he took us, and he claimed our first horse for us."

Among many of the early lessons the Hronis brothers learned while forging their relationship with Sadler is the more they listened and let their conditioner trust his instincts, the quicker success was going to come. Less than two years into building their stable, the siblings had their first big horse in Lady of Shamrock, a top-level winner on the turf who effectively broke the dam for a string of Hronis-owned, Sadler-trained standouts to come flooding in.

Lady of Shamrock was followed in quick succession by grade 1 winners Iotapa, Hard Aces, and the emergence of their first champion, Stellar Wind. Their trust in Sadler is such that they have kept all of their stock—now about 50 head—exclusively with the Long Beach native, and those Valley boys now stand as his largest client.

"John has built the stable, and he and (bloodstock agent) David Ingordo from the word go have taken us under their wing," Hronis said. "We haven't micromanaged him. We've listened to him. Let me put it this way: Besides training horses, John has also trained me and my brother, Pete, on how to be an owner.

"We've been trained by John, and this is the only way we know how to do things. We let the horsemen do their job and be the professional, and we try and support them any way we can."

Just getting to Breeders' Cup races with their runners has been a deeply satisfying achievement for a pair of owners who have had skin in the game for less than a decade. And had a single break gone Stellar Wind's way in the 2015 Longines Breeders' Cup Distaff (G1) at Keeneland, where she was beaten a neck by Stopchargingmaria, Sadler would be able to chase Breeders' Cup glory without having to hear about the missed opportunities along the way.

Although Sadler's Breeders' Cup record is absent of victories, it's not as though his efforts have been a total bust. Including Stellar Wind's near miss in the 2015 Distaff, he has had 10 horses finish second or third. Switch was right on the cusp for three years running, finishing second in both the 2010 and 2011 editions of the Filly & Mare Sprint (G1) and third in 2012. Iotapa was beaten a nose for second in the 2014 Distaff, and Cost of Freedom was a head away from victory when third in the 2009 Sprint (G1).

"A lot of my horses were second and third," said Sadler, who will also saddle Selcourt in the Nov. 3 Filly & Mare Sprint and Catapult in the Mile (G1T). "Switch was second, Stellar Wind was second, so we've taken a lot of horses to the Breeders' Cup, which speaks to our program of developing horses. But I definitely think (this year is my strongest group)."

It is hard to look back on Sadler's past Breeders' Cup rosters and find horses coming into the World Championships with as few obvious holes as Catalina Cruiser and Accelerate.

Purchased for $370,000 from the Lane's End consignment to the 2015 Keeneland September Yearling Sale, Catalina Cruiser didn't debut until October 2017 but has performed in a manner that already has Sadler tagging him as one to pick up the baton when Accelerate goes off to stud at Lane's End. The striking chestnut son of Union Rags  took the July 21 San Diego Handicap (G2) by 6 3/4 lengths in his stakes debut and locked himself down as the Dirt Mile favorite with his 7 1/4-length romp in the Aug. 25 Pat O'Brien Stakes (G2) at seven furlongs.

"Some people were kind of clamoring that they'd love to see Catalina Cruiser in the big race, but we decided kind of early on that Accelerate would go in the Classic, so we kept Catalina Cruiser for the Dirt Mile, even though he won the San Diego at 1 1/16 miles," Sadler said. "We look to use him next year to kind of stretch out in these races that Accelerate was in this year."

It wasn't that long ago that Sadler himself wondered about Accelerate's ability to stretch out in distance.

When he finished a well-beaten third in last year's TVG Pacific Classic (G1), the decision was made to point him to the Dirt Mile again—he finished third in 2016—even though he had previously bested champion Arrogate  in the TVG San Diego Handicap. Similar to the progression of 2017 Horse of the Year Gun Runner , Accelerate has improved by steady increments during his 5-year-old season. And though stamina was once considered a possible Achilles' heel, the chestnut now thrives over the 10-furlong distance and has shown the tactical ability to make his move from wherever his pilot chooses.

"He had a little problem at the Breeders' Cup last year (a quarter crack while finishing ninth), and that didn't work out as well as we'd hoped," Hronis said. "But I think going long and running the classic distance has made all the difference to him. That's where he grew into (himself) and became the horse we thought he would be.

"It was adding that distance and also being able to now relax and come off the pace if need be. He's matured enough now that I think if he breaks good and he goes out in front, he's fine with that. If he's off the pace a little bit, he's fine with that. He ran into some traffic a bit in the (grade 2) San Pasqual and got stuck on the rail, and he was fine with that. He's really shown his versatility this year to be able to do what he's done."

Winning outside of California is one of the few things still remaining for Accelerate to conquer, but the sample size for his prowess beyond The Golden State is small. In his only start away from the West Coast, he finished second in the Oaklawn Handicap (G2), beaten a neck by multiple grade 1 winner City of Light .

On paper, the majority of Accelerate's 13 rivals have much bigger questions they need to answer if they are to prevail Saturday. Can multiple grade/group 1 winner Mind Your Biscuits go the 10-furlong distance? Can Thunder Snow not freak out as he did in his only other visit to Churchill Downs? Can Roaring Lion handle dirt? And just how fit are West Coast  and McKinzie at this point in their abbreviated campaigns?

Yet Sadler knows it is his Breeders' Cup mark that stands as the most popular query this week, something he's accepted with a tremendous amount of grace. There was a time, however, when another California-based trainer had an 0-for-38 record, and even before Bobby Frankel got off the duck with Squirtle Squirt in the 2001 Sprint and eventually added five more Breeders' Cup wins, those with a modicum of sense still recognized the Hall of Famer as one of the best handlers of horseflesh in the game.

Regardless of whether this is the weekend Sadler's Breeders' Cup struggles come to an end, those who witness his craft believe there is no question they are in the presence of one of the sport's best.

"I know nothing would be more thrilling to the Hronis family than to be involved with John Sadler winning a Breeders' Cup, because I know for any trainer—and I know John really, really well now—the importance of getting that on your résumé, I think that's really important," Hronis said. "Instead of looking at that whole 0-for-41 thing, we're just going to say he's due."