It is the goal of every trainer with a Breeders’ Cup contender to have their horse in peak form come the first Saturday of November. And nobody has done the job better in the lead up to this year’s championship weekend than Rodolphe Brisset has with BC Sprint hopeful Mullikin.
The well-traveled Mullikin will enter the six-furlong Sprint having won all four of his starts in 2024, each successive race along the way better than the previous one. After starting the year with a pair of one-sided allowance wins at Keeneland and Churchill Downs for which he paired up career-best 98 Beyer Speed Figures, Mullikin posted a 102 Beyer winning the Grade 2 Nerud at Aqueduct by 1 1/2 lengths on July 6 before turning in his best performance seven weeks later when cruising to a 5 3/4-length victory in the Grade 1 Forego at Saratoga for which he improved again to a 105 Beyer. His last three wins have come at seven furlongs.
Brisset and the connections of Mullikin, who is owned in partnership by Siena Farm and WinStar Farm, briefly contemplated stretching their star out to run in the BC Dirt Mile before ultimately settling on the Sprint as their final goal.
“If the [Dirt] Mile was one turn, it might have been something I’d have been thinking a little deeper about,” said Brisset, who is stabled at Keeneland. “But the fact it’s two turns at Del Mar really made it a pretty easy decision to make.”
Brisset said he thought a lot of Mullikin right from the start, although it’s taken until his 4-year-old campaign for his true talent to finally emerge.
“I’ve been lucky enough to have had him since he was a 2-year-old and loved him from day one,” Brisset said. “He had a couple of hiccups at 3 but has really improved with his maturation as a 4-year-old. He’s had some gate issues in the past, but obviously he’s been doing much better with that this year.”
Brisset acknowledged he is well aware the prospective lineup for the Sprint could be about as strong a group, top to bottom, as seen in this event in many years.
“It’s a very wide-open division, nobody sticks out, with the Japanese horses perhaps the biggest question marks,” Brisset said. “But he’s been getting better and better by the numbers with every race and hopefully he can pick it up one more time in three weeks.”
Although Mullikin was in front at every call in the Forego, Brisset realizes that is likely not to be the case turning his horse back in distance for the Breeders’ Cup.
“We know he’s going up against some faster horses going six furlongs, but he doesn’t have to be on the lead,” Brisset said. “He really hasn’t been challenged in the final furlong in any of his races yet this year. We’ll just play the break and see how it goes. Hopefully, he’ll be able to find a good stalking position, run down the leaders, and then hold on. If you have the best horse, the good ones, they will get position and take you to the wire first.
“I just love this horse. He gave me my first Grade 1 victory, and if he can win this too, it would be the icing on the cake.”
Last Friday’s Win and You’re In Phoenix at Keeneland produced two very live contenders for the Sprint, Federal Judge and Nakatomi. Federal Judge rode the crest of a speed-biased track to an easy victory with Nakatomi, who finished third in the 2023 Sprint, doing well to rally against the grain of the bias to be second best while making his first start since winning the Grade 1 Vanderbilt earlier this summer at Saratoga.
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