DEL MAR, CA - NOVEMBER 01: Mindframe, left, ridden by Irad Ortiz Jr., and Forever Young, ridden by Ryusei Sakai, compete in the Longines Breeders' Cup Classic (G1) 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 ImagesSurprising even their own connections, the 2026 Dubai World Cup extreme favorite Forever Young and the challenger Magnitude put on a fine, tight match race-within-a-race in the mile-and-a-quarter at the Meydan on a remarkably relaxed drone-free Saturday evening in the Gulf tourist mecca, which contest Magnitude, under the wise hand of Jose Ortiz and trained by an elated Steve Asmussen, won handily, by three-quarters of a length. It was a perfect combination of factors that led to the upset, Magnitude having gone off at 15/2 (7.5-to-1), and Forever Young having gone off at a very finely sliced 8/11, London odds. The Irish horse, Imperial Emperor, who was expected to show vigor, strove mightily into fourth, just a head behind Meydaan. Ignominiously, the race’s defending champion, Hit Show, who was not a factor in the race, placed out of the money in a middling fifth, three-and-a-quarter lengths back from Imperial Emperor. Of the famously generous $12 million purse, a tidy $6,865,200 goes to Magnitude, Asmussen, Ortiz and company; Forever Young and his team can console themselves with a respectable $2,596,800; Meydaan walks away with a very cool $1,290,000; and for his fine work into fourth Imperial Emperor will return to the Emerald Isle with quite a sufficiency for the cost of a couple of pints of Guinness in his saddlebags, namely, $590,400. But it was Magnitude’s and Ortiz’s race from start to finish. Breaking well from the rail, Ortiz had Magnitude out in front of the peloton within the first few strides, and they powered in that position around the first turn. Sakai and Forever Young were ideally placed as well, just off the pace set by Magnitude. Up the backstretch the horses worked in tandem, Forever Young and Sakai having to jockey a bit more in the traffic than Magnitude and Ortiz. Coming into the far turn, that dynamic did not change. It was in the clubhouse turn and coming out of it that Ortiz had Magnitude make what many might criticize as perhaps an early move, but the tactic was clearly executed by Ortiz from a rather masterful “insurance” point of view, meaning, he seemed to know that he had a lot of horse under him rather than a little, despite Magnitude’s having borne the weight of the pace up front for the majority of the race. In effect, this was Ortiz throwing down a gauntlet to his fellow jockeys, virtually begging them to bring their runs. Very few of them could. In the stretch, this meant Magnitude suddenly opened up three lengths on the pack, with the furlongs diminishing swiftly down the straight to the wire. Forever Young, still just a bit mired in traffic coming out of the turn but somewhat slowed, found himself in a, for him, unaccustomed position: He suddenly had to work to catch up rather than being the smooth, dominant master of the last two furlongs of any race he could have chosen to enter. If there can be said to have been one moment in which Forever Young learned that he had left himself too much to do in this run, this was it. The unfortunate sum was that it took Forever Young and Sakai a couple of strides to gather themselves for the task of running down Magnitude. And that work came too late. Slowly they began to close on the leader, but Magnitude, for his part arguably finally tiring now, veered a little wide—meaning, to his right—during his stretch run, and as the match race separated the two front runners from the pack, they got skewed at a slight angle to the wire. In other words, both horses seemed to take the fight wide and lost a little ground. With much effort Forever Young and Sakai had just worked themselves up to the right of Magnitude’s heaving hindquarters—and were still gaining on him—when they hit the wire. Forever Young entered the record books three-fourths of a length back. If the race had been an old-fashioned mile-and-a-half Belmont Stakes, Forever Young would have earned the chance to put Magnitude away. In this delightful thriller of an upset, that was not to be.