Sovereignty, the favourite for Saturday’s $7 million Longines Breeders’ Cup Classic, will be scratched.
Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott confirmed the Kentucky Derby/Belmont Stakes/Travers Stakes winner will be taken out of the feature race after he spiked a fever on Tuesday.
Owned and bred by Godolphin, the son of Into Mischief was monitored all day Tuesday and into Wednesday but Mott is unhappy enough to pull him out leaving Fierceness the new favourite with last year's winner Sierra Leone disputing the market leader position.
Speaking on the Breeders' Cup account on X the trainer said: "He spiked another fever even though he’d had some medication in him since 6am on Tuesday morning. We re-treated him and of course he’s now on antibiotics. He seems to be doing fine this morning, his temperature is down to just one tick above normal and he looks bright and looks pretty good. But he’s definitely out of the Breeders’ Cup, he’ll be scratched.
“He still has not missed an oat, he’s in his hay bag, he eats all the hay that’s on the ground and goes to the hay bag and has his nose in there. He seems to have a good attitude. I don’t know if he knows he’s sick.
“There’s nothing I would have changed, nothing we can do about it. When it comes to something like this I just think its really bad luck. I think you have viruses and bacteria floating through the air and for whatever reason his immune system probably didn’t battle it off.
“It’s really bad timing for us. We’d love to run, we’d love to showcase our horse. I know there’s a lot of people who were really looking forward to seeing him run as well as our entire team.
“We were very anxious and excited to run in what is probably shaping up to the best Breeders’ Cup Classic in some time but we won’t have that opportunity this year.”
The scratching is a huge blow to the Classic field and the meeting itself, with Sovereignty the biggest draw of the two days following a largely unblemished campaign.
His only defeat came on his second start of the year at Gulfstream but he has been imperious since, winning by 10 lengths at Saratoga in the Travers last time out.
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