2025 Breeders’ Cup Classic: Each Contender’s Defining Victory This Season
Image by Anil sharma from Pixabay
There are sporting events—and then there’s the Breeders’ Cup Classic. The storied showdown is the most lucrative race in all of American racing, and this year, the field couldn’t be more wide open.
The 2025 renewal at Del Mar is no ordinary headline act; it’s the exclamation point on a season brimming with seismic shifts, rivalries forged in fire, and international intrigue that defies borders.
The build-up reads almost like an epic novel. Sovereignty, Godolphin’s undefeated behemoth, is chasing a year for the ages, daring history to keep up. Sierra Leone, last year’s champion, returns older, stronger, hungry for a coronation that would silence all doubters.
Forever Young carries the weight of Japan’s dreams. While Journalism seeks vindication in a year built on near-misses. But out of those heavyweights, there is one contender that horse racing odds makers fancy above all others.
That, of course, is the aforementioned Sovereignty, with the latest horse racing at Bovada odds pricing him as a +200 favourite. But why is Bill Mott’s charge given top billing? And what have his Classic rivals done this year to ramp up the pressure on the frontrunner? Let’s take a look.
Sovereignty
How do you measure supremacy in three-year-old colts? For Sovereignty, the answer is everything: performance, pressure, pedigree, and poise. He was electric in the 2025 Kentucky Derby, unleashing a right-handed drive that saw him surge clear late, drawing away by one and a half lengths from the gallant favorite Journalism.
The final sectionals marked the fastest Derby finish in nearly a decade—a devastating turn of foot under Bill Mott’s masterly care.
Did you cash in on Sovereignty winning the 151st Kentucky Derby? +600 🤑#KentuckyDerby
pic.twitter.com/KwIFwCjX8U— Bovada (@BovadaOfficial) May 3, 2025
What truly sets him apart? After the Derby, he doubled down in the Belmont, turning away rivals with the same icy coolness.
After missing the Preakness, many thought the door was open for rival Journalism to tie up their series against each other. Instead, Sovereignty streaked clear, a perfect two from two against what many thought was the top three-year-old Colt Stateside before the Triple Crown got underway.
His dominance is underpinned by impeccable dirt credentials and a tactical versatility that leaves no obvious weakness to exploit. Undefeated, battle-tested, and peaking when the money’s down, Sovereignty heads into Del Mar not just as a favorite, but as a potential all-time great.
Sierra Leone
Comebacks in racing aren’t given; they are wrestled from adversity and self-doubt. Early in 2025, Sierra Leone faced just that—a tepid third in the New Orleans Classic was supposed to mark the end of his prime.
Instead, it was the prologue. Under Chad Brown’s steady hand, Sierra Leone stormed Saratoga’s revered Whitney Stakes, displaying a blend of speed and power not seen since his career-defining score in the Breeders’ Cup late last year.
In the Whitney, the colt faced seasoned elders—and won like a champion, earning a Timeform figure that many ranked above his own Classic win last autumn. Resilience isn’t a statistic, but if it were, Sierra Leone’s chart would be off the scale. No narrative here is more compelling: defending champion, written off by critics, now roaring back as the clear and present danger to Sovereignty’s supposed coronation.
Journalism
No rivalry in 2025 drips with as much narrative heat as Sovereignty vs. Journalism. But for Michael McCarthy’s charge, his campaign has been one spent in the shadow of a less fancied adversary. His Preakness win—rallying late after a dismal start that led some to think whether he was any good at all—was able to prove that the horse has heart.
But is he as good as originally billed earlier in the year? Without Sovereignty in the field, some cast doubt. But Journalism’s subsequent Haskell victory, against a deeper field, silenced a legion of skeptics.
Here’s the cold reality: Journalism has been the second-best horse of his generation—but “best of the rest” is a tag that fuels obsessions, not satisfaction.
The Pacific Classic is his last dry run before a Breeders’ Cup showdown with the weight of legacy on the line. If Journalism topples his nemesis at Del Mar, the debates will rage: Was he always Sovereignty’s equal, held back only by fate and timing?
Forever Young
No horse in the Classic carries a more tantalizing international backstory than Forever Young. His victory margin in the Saudi Cup? A neck—the length of a thoroughbred’s defiance against a world-class field. Poetry in motion under the fiercest pressure post-race summarises will have read, but his owners won’t have cared one bit about the margin, considering just how big the prize was that they scooped up.
Post-Saudi Cup, he tuned up with another win on home soil—proving it wasn’t a fluke. Remember, this is a colt who finished third in both the 2024 Kentucky Derby and the Classic. He’s versatile, resilient, and possesses a late kick that turns routine finishes into chaos.
There’s plenty to like about his closing sectionals, and racing romantics still adore the idea of Japan’s first Classic winner. That could well be the headline story come November.
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