Modern Games romps home after being reinstated at Breeders’ Cup meeting

• William Buick’s mount wins after being taken out of the betting
• Corniche gives Bob Baffert a fifth win in Breeders’ Cup Juvenile

The first day of the Breeders’ Cup meeting at Del Mar racecourse in California concluded in extraordinary and chaotic circumstances on Friday after Modern Games, trained in Newmarket by Charlie Appleby, was scratched from the Juvenile Turf on veterinary advice and then reinstated, before running out an easy winner as boos rang out from the grandstands.

The drama began when Modern Games’s stable companion Albahr, drawn on his outside in stall two, became upset in the gate and put his feet over the front of the stall. “He freaked out and put his legs across [the gate],” Frankie Dettori, his rider, said. “Thanks to the boys who got me out of there, it could have been nasty.”

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