Favored Cody’s Wish Saturday won the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile for the second consecutive year, with the victory becoming official following a seven-minute stewards’ inquiry at Santa Anita Park.
National Treasure, the 2023 Preakness Stakes champion, set an uncontested pace as Cody’s Wish trailed the field of seven early. On the backstretch, Alvarado began to close in and by the time the field was in the far turn, Cody’s Wish had moved into third.
National Treasure maintained his advantage until inside the eighth pole when Cody’s Wish ranged up alongside with the two racing as a team and exchanging bumps to the wire where Cody’s Wish won by a nose.
The stewards voted unanimously that the contact was initiated by both horses.
“Right when I got next to National Treasure, I know he kind of came out and tried to meet with my horse,” Junior Alvarado, the jockey for Cody’s Wish, said about Flavien Prat, the jockey for National Treasure, who he accused of starting the brushing.
“I just think at that point where he’s brushing my horse, I had the bigger horse and the mean horse, probably,” Alvarado said. “I was trying to go right after him. Trying to keep him straight, but like I said, at that point, I think my horse was feeling a little bit of a fight, and he tried to go right after the other horse.
“But I knew it was nothing really to change the outcome. My horse was already in front, and like I said, he was never going to let that other horse go by again.”
As a then-unamed 5-month-old foal in October 2018, Cody’s Wish met Cody Dorman, then a 12-year-old born with Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome, as part of a Make-A-Wish event at Gainsborough Farm in Kentucky. The genetic condition can leave a person without the ability to walk or communicate and Cody wasn’t supposed to live past 2.
Cody’s Wish kept inching closer to Cody’s wheelchair “until his nose was right there,” Danny Mulvihill, farm manager at Gainsborough, told the ”Los Angeles Times.”
“He was nuzzling Cody’s hand and then his head went into Cody’s lap,” Mulvihill said.
Cody’s Wish was named for Cody Dorman, who attended both of his Breeders’ Cup victories.
“I think that horse probably saved Cody’s life in a lot of ways,” Cody’s father Kelly Dorman said after Saturday’s race. “I know him and the horse has made a lot of lives better.”
Saturday’s race was the last of Cody’s Wish’s career. He will be retired to stud after winning 11 of 16 races, including five Grade 1 races, finishing second once and third four times.
“We’re so fortunate to have him and so fortunate to share the story with the Dorman family,” said Michael Banahan, the director of bloodstock for Godolphin, the United Arab Emirates-based international racing operation which owns Cody’s Wish.
“We regret the run coming to an end. Hopefully there’s going to be great opportunities for the Dormans to come out and visit him at the stallion barn when he gets there. If Bill (Mott) is still training, maybe we’ll get some babies down the road and we can do it again.”