In the 30 years before the first Breeders’ Cup Classic in 1984, the Jockey Club Gold Cup provided a similar conclusion to the racing season, crowning nine Horses of the Year with an honor roll of winning Hall of Famers including Nashua, Kelso, Buckpasser, Damascus, Affirmed, and John Henry and runners-up including Seattle Slew and Spectacular Bid. The 30 years since have been a different story. The Gold Cup is now merely one of more than a dozen Breeders’ Cup “prep races” that will be run this weekend. The headline on a Belmont Park press release promoting Saturday’s card did not even mention the name of the once-mighty race, instead advertising “Six Graded Stakes, Food Trucks and Family Fun.” The 31 years since the first Breeders’ Cup have not been kind to Gold Cup winners or the horseplayers who bet them back in the Classic. Since 1984, only three Gold Cup winners from 24 starters have won the Classic – Curlin in 2007, Skip Away in 1997, and Cigar in 1995. Curlin (twice), Cigar, and Mineshaft in 2003 are the only Gold Cup winners to be named Horse of the Year at season’s end. During that same span, 11 Classic winners have won that award. What has happened is more than replacing one race with another as the sport’s year-end championship event. Fairly or not, the Gold Cup is now regarded warily, a race to be avoided if you want to win the Classic. This is not necessarily an unfair assessment: Of the 24 Gold Cup winners who have returned in the Classic, 17 have been less than 5-1, including nine favorites. A $2 win bet on each of the Gold Cup winners would have cost $48, and the 3-for-24 outcome would have returned $19.80 (Cigar at $3.40, Skip Away at $5.60, and Curlin at $10.80). The gripe with the Gold Cup used to be that it was a longer race than the Classic, and it made no sense to turn a horse back in distance from one race to the other. After Easy Goer won the 1 1/2-mile Gold Cup of 1989 but then lost the Classic as the 1-2 favorite, the race was shortened from 1 1/2 to 1 1/4 miles. (It had previously been shortened from 2 to 1 1/2 miles in 1976.) Yet it has proven extremely difficult for horses to put in two top efforts back to back at 10 furlongs. Even in the years when the Breeders’ Cup was held at Belmont (really, there used to be Breeders’ Cups in New York; you can look it up), Gold Cup winners didn’t come close to replicating their performances at the same track and distance. Cigar did, but Flying Continental ran 11th at 9-2 in the 1990 Classic after winning the Gold Cup; Aptitude was eighth as the 2-1 favorite in 2001; and Borrego was 10th at 5-2 in 2005. The race also has been a victim of the less-is-more thinking that now dominates American training and campaigning. A perfect example is Honor Code, who would have been odds-on in the Gold Cup but is instead running in the one-mile, Grade 2 Kelso on the undercard. Shug McGaughey, who trains Honor Code and trained Easy Goer, told DRF’s Jay Privman this week that his decision to prepare for the Classic in the shorter, easier race was in part inspired by Easy Goer’s defeat in the 1989 Classic. Even so, the differences in the campaigns of Easy Goer and Honor Code are in stark contrast. When Honor Code runs in the Classic, it will be his fifth start of the year. When Easy Goer ran in the 1989 Gold Cup, it was his 10th start of the year, following appearances in the Swale, Gotham, Wood Memorial, Derby, Preakness, Belmont, Whitney, Travers, and Woodward. So, in Honor Code’s absence, we have a six-horse Gold Cup on Saturday where the field has combined to go 1 for 9 in Grade 1 races this year. The heavy favorite is Tonalist, last year’s winner, who was second to Honor Code in this year’s Met Mile and third to him in the Whitney. Tonalist will try to improve on last year’s record of going from a Gold Cup victory to running fifth in the Classic, but even if he wins, he won’t be better than about the sixth choice in the Classic behind American Pharoah, Honor Code, Beholder, Liam’s Map, and Smooth Roller, and maybe a bigger price than Frosted and Keen Ice as well. His most serious opponent is Constitution, who probably will try to wire the field while making just his second start since winning the Grade 1 Donn in February. His most interesting if unserious opponent is Looks to Spare: The 5-year-old Pollard’s Vision gelding was bought for just $5,000 out of a claiming race at Hawthorne in April and won the West Virginia Governor’s Cup at Mountaineer last time out at odds of 74-1. He’s not exactly a worthy substitute for Honor Code, but at least he’s an entertaining one.