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Libertango out to set Breeders’ Cup record straight for owner Araci

By Racing TV

Last Updated: Sun 25 Oct 2026

Libertango produced a fine performance to win the Lowther Stakes last time out

Ibrahim Araci will look on with pride when his red, white and blue silks line up at Keeneland as Libertango aims to banish Breeders’ Cup heartache from 12 years ago in the Juvenile Turf Sprint.

The Turkish breeder and owner will have only his second runner at the end-of-season championships as his star filly looks to add the prestigious five-and-a-half-furlong contest to her CV.

With the Albany and Lowther Stakes already in the bag, Libertango heads Stateside as one of the favourites on Friday, but also with Aktabantay’s cross-Atlantic trip in 2014 in mind.

Aktabantay was a leading light for Araci and trainer Hugo Palmer ahead of the Juvenile Turf at Santa Anita, only for a mishap in the quarantine barn to derail their hopes on the eve of the race.

Hopefully No Nay Never filly Libertango will make the line up in Kentucky with no such problems as she looks to join Glacius in becoming an Araci-owned Grade One winner.

“Mr Araci’s been involved in the game now for a long time, for 15 or 16 years, and he’s lucky to have had a lot of very good horses over the years,” Araci’s bloodstock and racing manager Rob Speers said.

“We currently have nine horses in training, so to have nine horses in training and one of those be Libertango and one be Glacius makes it a pretty exceptional year.

“Mr Araci has spent plenty of money over the years putting in the foundations, building it, buying and redeveloping a stud farm and doing it the right way round, taking his time to try to build a little bit of a legacy, and horses like this can be his legacy.

“When it comes to the Breeders’ Cup, we actually took a very good horse out there many years ago with Hugo Palmer, a horse called Aktabantay, and he was going to run in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf over a mile.

“But he kicked the wall in the quarantine barn the night before and fractured a bone and was unable to run. I believe he was impressing everyone out there and he’d have gone off nearly favourite, and this filly is a very close relation of Aktabantay.

“So there’s a little feeling of maybe it’s time to make amends for that trip.”

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Libertango’s only defeats have come at Newmarket, to Prix Morny victor Senorita Bonita and three-time Group One winner Sun Goddess, with Speers optimistic about her chances in America.

“She is really well, obviously you get to this time of year, we’re heading towards November now, and she’d have been on the go most of the year as she was bought at the breeze-up,” he added.

“So you never know when they might go over the top, but certainly at the moment she doesn’t appear to have done.

“I was at Kempton with her and she worked five furlongs round the bend left-handed, so the opposite way round Kempton to what they normally race to replicate Keeneland, and she travelled beautifully and showed her lightning quick electric turn of foot that she has at the end of it.

“She goes there in every bit as good a form as the Cheveley Park, if not maybe better.

“I believe she’s been stepping forward from race to race – physically, she’s improving from race to race.

“She was very, very smart in her work and I also feel she’s such a strong-travelling filly in all of her races that the drop back to five and a half furlongs won’t do her any harm at all. I also think racing round a bend might bring out the best of her.

“This will only be Mr Araci’s second runner in the Breeders’ Cup. It’s always been the plan to come here via the Lowther and the Cheveley Park. Thankfully, she’s danced every dance and come out of it absolutely fine each time and there’s no reason to not go.

“We go out there rated 115 and we’re getting 3lbs off the colts and geldings. On ratings she stands out if she’s able to put her best foot forward.”

Speers in fact has a storied history with the Breeders’ Cup after breeding the Aidan O’Brien-trained Wrote, who landed the 2011 Juvenile Turf.

But how would a potential Libertango success compare to that triumph?

“From a personal point of view, it’ll be very, very hard to beat the feeling I got having bred a Breeders’ Cup winner myself out of my own mare,” Speers concluded.

“I think that, as a personal achievement, is something that will be very hard to beat, but this is completely different. This is about Mr Araci.

“And in its own way it’s just as important, if not more important, and it’ll mean just as much.

“I’ve worked with Mr Araci now for the best part of 16 years and at times when we’ve gone a year or two without a horse, investing money into the stud and we haven’t seen his colours on the courses much or whatever, he’s always been very loyal.

“He’s always stuck by me, we get on very well and we like the same type of horses, and for all of the work that we’ve done together, I would feel the level of joy that it would bring me, knowing that Mr Araci had won a Breeders’ Cup, would be very similar but different to winning it with Wrote.”

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