DEL MAR, CA - NOVEMBER 01: Forever Young, left, ridden by Ryusei Sakai, wins the Longines Breeders' Cup Classic during the 42nd Breeders' Cup Thoroughbred World Championships on November 1, 2025, at Del Mar Racetrack in Del Mar, CA. (Photo by Karl Anderson/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)Icon Sportswire via Getty ImagesAs in all sport, in racing occasionally there comes along an athlete of such daunting talent and intelligence that most every contender in his or her vicinity get swiftly put in the shade. Zenyatta was such a filly, Seattle Slew was such a colt; more recently, the magisterial Flightline and Bill Mott’s tough late closer Sovereignty reassure us that the sport has much life yet in it, that our grand river of breeding stock is healthy and deep. Forever Young, who in today’s Dubai Cup will vie to become the richest equine athlete on earth with $35-plus millions in earnings under his saddle, belongs in that company. It’s for his eight competitors today to figure out how to race this Hercules, and there do exist various tiny slivers of chance for a sprinkling of them, but before we get into what Magnitude, Meydaan, and maybe even the truly-overmatched defending Dubai Cup champion, Hit Show, have to do to get to the line first, herewith, a refresher on the field, with the latest London odds. Post Position, (Saddle Cloth/Program Number), Horse, Jockey, Trainer, London Odds1.(2) Magnitude, Jose Ortiz, Steve Asmussen, 7-12.(4) Meydaan, William Buick, Simon and Ed Crisford, 7-13.(7) Walk of Stars, Mickael Barzalona, Bhupat Seemar, 40-14.(8) Heart of Honor, Saffie Osborne, Jamie Osborne, 50-15.(3) Hit Show, Florent Geroux, Brad Cox, 10-16.(1) Forever Young, Ryusei Sakai, Yoshito Yahagi, 2-57.(5 ) Imperial Emperor, Tadhg O’Shea, Bhupat Seemar, 8-18.(9) Tap Leader, Pat Dobbs, Doug Watson, 50-19.(6) Tumbarumba, James Doyle, Hamal Al Jehani, 16-1First, the heavy favorite’s armor, so to speak, to give us an idea of the immense number of race scenarios that he’s capable of dealing with. Forever Young is a highly tactical stalker in the sense that, while he does seem to prefer to stay just off the pace and then bring his clean, big runs in the last couple of furlongs, he’s also quite at home being challenged, or blocked, from executing that in a stop/start traffic scenario, requiring him to build back up to cruising speed before he strikes. In a word, he’s cool and collected under fire and not fussy about having to delay his moves. What that means for his opponents, specifically, Magnitude and Meydaan, and possibly the more tactically fragile Hit Show, is that they and their jockeys have to play off each other and the traffic of the peloton in order to take every advantage that the pack affords them to gain every single inch of ground they can on Forever Young. At every point in the race. That’s a lot harder than it sounds (and it is at the crux of the host of reasons the odds are so lopsidedly in Forever Young’s favor), because Forever Young and his tactically superb rider, Sakai, have the muscle and the moxie to be anywhere they like in the race at any given moment. In turn, this means that those competing jockeys have to open their minds, and their mounts’ minds, to an extremely fluid race scenario as it unfolds around them in real time over the mile-and-a-quarter this evening. This is what’s called “stepping up,” as in, to snag even a glimmer of a hope to pull even with a horse and jockey such as Forever Young and Sakai — to say nothing of beating them down the lane — it’s required that one races in every second of the blistering two minutes as freely and with as much discipline and presence as they routinely bring to bear. They have to be that good, and better than that. Into first turn, all the way up the backstretch and out of the final turn, down to the line. That’s an especially tall order because Forever Young has such a high cruising speed and on top of that, his smoking-hot big last-furlong runs have consistently bested the very, very best. He just did it putting away Sierra Leone in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic, and put a punctuation mark on that run with another big run (in lesser company) in the Saudi Cup last month. He’s not going to stop doing that until they put him in the breeding barn. It’s the way he’s built. Bottom line: To beat that array of racing weaponry in that package, Magnitude, Meydaan, Hit Show and the rest will have to leave their prolonged adolescence behind in the furious heat of this competition. It’s possible for them to grow up suddenly, like, last night. But it isn’t very likely. They’re racing a man out there today.