Chaque Groupe 1. Un seul endroit.

No rider has owned the Breeders' Cup like Mike Smith. He has won 27 races at the meeting from 157 rides, more than any jockey since the series began in 1984. The most famous came in 2009, when he steered Zenyatta to victory in the Classic, the only time a mare has won the race. His latest arrived in 2021, when Corniche took the Juvenile at Del Mar. Irad Ortiz Jr is closest on 23 wins, with John Velazquez third on 22.

Makybe Diva did what no other horse has managed in the Melbourne Cup: she won it three years running, in 2003, 2004 and 2005. Glen Boss rode her every time. David Hall trained her for the first win before Lee Freedman took over for the next two, which also took Freedman to five Cups in total. Since her third victory no horse has even won the race twice, and the record of the champion mare looks as safe as ever.

Aidan O'Brien arrives at Keeneland level with Bob Baffert on 21 Breeders' Cup wins, the most by any trainer. Baffert drew level at Del Mar last year, and D. Wayne Lukas is next on 20. O'Brien's first came in 2001, when Johannesburg won the Juvenile at Belmont Park, and 18 of his 21 have come on turf, eight of them in the Juvenile Turf. This week Sun Goddess and Diamond Necklace can take him clear of Baffert.

Bart Cummings won the Melbourne Cup twelve times, a record no other trainer has come anywhere near. The first came with Light Fingers in 1965, the last with Viewed in 2008, more than four decades later. Along the way his Kingston Rule set the race record of 3:16.30 in 1990, a time no winner has bettered in the 35 years since. Lee Freedman is next on the all-time list with five Cups, fewer than half the Cummings total.

Keeneland stages the Breeders' Cup for the fourth time, after 2015, 2020 and 2022. Its first edition produced one of the great moments in the sport: American Pharoah won the 2015 Classic to become the first horse to complete the Grand Slam of the Triple Crown and the Classic. In 2020 Authentic beat his stable companion Improbable for Bob Baffert, and two years later Flightline won the Classic by eight and a quarter lengths.

For 154 years no woman rode a Melbourne Cup winner. Then Michelle Payne won on Prince of Penzance in 2015, a 101.00 outsider in the betting. Ten years later Jamie Melham became the second, guiding Half Yours home by a length and a half on a soft track for Tony and Calvin McEvoy. Melham had already won the Caulfield Cup on the gelding, and twelve months earlier she had finished third in the race on Okita Soushi.

Goldikova made the Breeders' Cup Mile her own. The French mare won it in 2008, 2009 and 2010, with Olivier Peslier in the saddle every time for trainer Freddy Head and owners Alain and Gérard Wertheimer. No other horse has ever won the same Breeders' Cup race three times. Only Beholder has matched her total of three Breeders' Cup victories, taking the Juvenile Fillies in 2012 and the Distaff in 2013 and again in 2016.