It's 24 hours of sporting sensory overload, with the NBA season tipping off last night, Aqueduct opening a six-month stand this afternoon and the World Series starting tonight. For horseplayers, though, the shiniest toy to start playing with is the Breeders' Cup pre-entries, which were released this morning. Full past performances will be on newsstands tomorrow and online here tonight, and if you're still not using Formulator, I can't think of a better time to try it out, given the value of seeing lifetime pp's of these horses and being able to click through to the full results charts of any of their last five races.
Here's version 1.0 of the pre-entries with some bare-bones stats on the entrants. It's pretty self-explanatory except for the HWL column -- this stands for Highest Winning Level, meaning the highest grade of race each horse has won -- maiden (Mdn), allowance (Alw), non-graded stakes (Stk) or graded and group stakes (G1, G2, G3). I'll be revising, resorting and reposting this list between now and next Tuesday, when final entries will be drawn for the Nov. 6 and 7 cards.
Horses are listed alphabetically within each race, with their stats listed in those races for which they were entered with first preference; 37 of the 166 horses were cross-entered in two races. The races are listed in the preliminary order they are scheduled to be run, with six races Friday and eight on Saturday.
For those fellow obsessives who want to make their own spreadsheets and cheat sheets, feel free to use this link to access this Google Doc, which you should then be able to copy: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AlJeMLWyKUIodDNncTB4MERTMV9WMnVDUlA5aG8tMGc&hl=en
And now the list, followed by a mini-leaderboard:
Here are the leaders among the 166 pre-entrants in career earnings, starts and victories:
