Not much has changed among my top contenders for the Breeders’ Cup Classic on Nov. 2 at Del Mar. The top three, four of the top six, and seven of my top 11 contenders for North America’s richest race are still all 3-year-olds.

With the Pennsylvania Derby (G1) on Saturday at Parx, however, I added a couple top contenders to that race to my long-shot list for the Classic in Preakness winner Seize the Grey and Santa Anita Derby (G1) winner Stronghold. Dragoon Guard, winner of both the Indiana and West Virginia derbies (G3), is the 9-5 morning-line favorite and was already among my contenders.

Pennsylvania Derby: 3 stand out in $1 million race.

One of the moves I made to make room for the sophomores was to remove National Treasure. He very well may return, but reading the tea leaves made me think he is destined for the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile.

Spendthrift Farm announced that National Treasure will stand alongside Dornoch beginning the 2025 stallion season. Add in that Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert has both Muth and National Treasure, and National Treasure double-dipping for both Spendthrift and Baffert in the Classic seems unlikely. He finished a great second to eventual horse of the year Cody’s Wish in the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile last year, and that race would be a fine way for the multiple Grade 1 winner to close his career.

Fierceness remains my most likely winner to this point, and given the fervor over City of Troy pointing to this race, there might end up being value on the 2023 champion 2-year-old male who most recently won the Travers Stakes (G1). There has been some fastest-horse-in-the-world talk as it relates to turf sprint wunderkind Cogburn, but Fierceness has run the fastest Ragozin Figures of any North America-based horse this year.