Which is the only horse to have won the Breeders’ Cup Classic twice?

Run over a mile and a quarter on dirt and, nowadays, worth $6 million in prize money, the Breeders’ Cup Classic is the most valuable and prestigious race run at the Breeders’ Cup World Championships. Indeed, such is its standing in North America that, alongside the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes, the race forms one version of the so-called ‘Grand Slam of Thoroughbred Racing’.

The Breeders’ Cup Classic is open to horses aged three years old and upwards but, at the time of writing, in 39 runnings, only Tiznow, trained by Jay Robbins in California, has won the race more than once. On November 4, 2000, at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, the three-year-old son of Cee’s Tizzy took the scalp of the so-called ‘Iron Horse’, Giant’s Causeway, trained by Aidan O’Brien. Having made the early running, Tiznow was briefly headed by Albert The Great with three furlongs left to run, but regained the lead inside the final quarter of a mile and, although eyeball-to-eyeball with Giant’s Causeway in the closing stages, was driven out to win by a neck.

Tiznow won the Eclipse Award for Horse of the Year in 2000 but, having won his first two starts of 2001, suffered a strained lumber vertebrae, which kept him off the track until the Grade 1 Woodward Stakes at Belmont Park in Elton, New York on September 8. He was beaten, albeit not far, in that race and on his next start, at Santa Anita in Arcadia, California, a month later, but nonetheless returned to Belmont Park on October 27 to defend his Breeders’ Cup Classic title. In what would be his last race, he overhauled the leader, Sakhee, in the final hundred yards and ran on well to win by a nose.