Novellist grinds out victory at Baden-Baden

Christoph Berglar's  four-year-old Novellist, Europe's top older horse,

won Sunday's Group 1 Grosser Preis von Baden at Baden-Baden in Germany and

became the first horse to win three Breeders' Cup Challenge races in a single

year.

The Breeders' Cup Challenge is a global series of 67 stakes races whose

winners receive automatic starting berths into a corresponding race of the

Breeders' Cup World Championships, which will be held on November 1-2 at Santa

Anita Park in Arcadia, California.

Novellist, trained by Andreas Wohler and ridden to victory by Eddie Perdroza,

previously won the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud in France in June, which gave the

bay son of Monsun an automatic berth into the $3 million Breeders' Cup Turf.

Last month, Novellist dominated his second Challenge series race taking the King

George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot by five lengths.

Sent away as the odds on-favorite against just four rivals in the 1 1/2-mile

Grosser Preis, Novellist took the lead with a furlong remaining  and held

off three-time Group 1 winner Meandre and stablemate Seismos in the final 100

yards to win by three-quarters of a length.

"He wasn't as spectacular as at Ascot, but he on won in the way we were

expecting as he was only 80 to 90 percent right today," Wohler told Racing

Post, who added that Novellist would be pointed to the Prix de l'Arc de

Triomphe at Longchamp on October 6 for this next start, and regular rider Johnny

Murtagh would return for the mount.

Novellist has now won nine of his 11 career starts and his fifth in a row, a

streak which began with a win in the Gran Premio del Jockey Club Italiano last

October and continued this year with a victory in the Grosser Preis der

Badischen Unternehmer at Baden-Baden on May 12, prior to the Grand Prix de

Saint-Cloud triumph.

Novellist is one of six horses who have already qualified for the Turf this

year. He joins Ordak Dan, who won the Gran Premio 25 de Mayo in Argentina; Gold

Ship, winner of the Takazuka Kinen in Japan; Big Blue Kitten, who won the United

Nations Stakes at Monmouth Park in July; Real Solution, winner of the Arlington

Million; and Vagabond Shoes, who captured the Del Mar Handicap one week ago.

As a part of the enhancements of the Breeders' Cup Challenge series,

Breeders' Cup Ltd., will pay the US$60,000 entry fee for Novellist to start in

the Turf if he is nominated to the Breeders' Cup program by October 21. All

horses entered from outside of the United States and Canada entered in this

year's Breeders' Cup will also receive a US$40,000 travel allowance.

In other Breeders' Cup Challenge results Sunday, the two-year-old filly

Rizeena qualified for the $1 million Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf, after

bursting through in the stretch to win the Group 1 Moyglare Stud Stakes at the

Curragh in Ireland for trainer Clive Brittain.

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