BRENDAN Walsh finished up his work one morning more than a dozen years ago and shared some dreams when prompted by his boss.

“If there’s one race that you could win anywhere in the world, what would it be?” Mark Wallace, a trainer from Tipperary still a few years out from his landmark victory in the Group 1 Prix de l’Abbaye de Longchamp with Benbaun.

Walsh, a native of Co Cork and now a trainer based at Keeneland Racecourse in the US, worked at the time for Wallace out of his yard in Newmarket. He’d grown up in racing, worked at Sheikh Mohammed’s Kildangan Stud in Kildare and spent time working with and around such global superstars as Dubai Millennium, Daylami, Fantastic Light and Cape Cross in Europe and Dubai.

“We were working in England at the time and he said Royal Ascot, that he’d love to trainer a winner there, especially a two-year-old winner,”

Walsh said on Thursday in Lexington. “The funny thing was I said the one I’d love to win is the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. That’s a true story. I remember it well and who knows, maybe it will happen.”

Walsh gets the chance to realise that dream next weekend when he sends out the unbeaten Maxfield in next Friday’s $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Santa Anita Park. Godolphin’s homebred son of Street Sense goes into the eight-and-a-half-furlong Juvenile off back-to-back victories, the most recent an impressive five-and-a-half-length victory in the Grade 1 Claiborne Breeders’ Futurity.

Maxfield, who broke his maiden with a similar off-the-pace run on September 14th at Churchill Downs, gave Walsh his first Grade 1 victory.

He’ll be his third starter at the two-day festival, following 2013 Breeders’ Cup Marathon third-place finisher Worldly and Vitalogy, who also runs on next Friday’s card in the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf.

“Growing up in Ireland, American racing was the Breeders’ Cup,” Walsh said. “Even more than the Kentucky Derby. When we watched the Breeders’ Cup there were always Irish or European interests.

“I remember when Lestor (Piggot) won with Royal Academy. I remember when Ridgewood Pearl won, I was with Kildangan then when she won the Turf.

“If I looked at a list now it would spark my memory of all the times watching those races. That’s what we always associated with American racing.”

Walsh, 46, made his own foray into the American racing scene about a dozen years ago, starting as an assistant to Eddie Kenneally before opening his own stable full-time in 2012.

He learned about what it’s like to be around top-tier horses well before that though, working his way through the ranks breaking yearlings and later as a rider and barn foreman for Godolphin.

He spent nine winters in Dubai, including seven working for Godolphin.

Those stints melded into others in Newmarket, working for Saeed bin Suroor and Tom Albertrani, and traveling around the world with some of the Maktoum family’s best runners.

Walsh carved out a strong reputation in a short time in the US, winning eight graded stakes in his first four full seasons before winning major events with the likes of Proctor’s Ledge, Honorable Duty, Multiplier and Scuba in 2017. He won the $2 million UAE Derby in March with Plus Que Parfait and saddled that colt to an eighth in his Kentucky Derby debut in May.

In the weeks between the UAE Derby and the start of the US Triple Crown – a hectic time for horsemen in the states with horses shipping north, major meetings starting and two-year-olds shipping in from training centres – Walsh took a call that set in motion Maxfield’s run toward the Breeders’ Cup.

“We want you to take some more two-year-olds for us, do you have room?” said Jimmy Bell, president of Godolphin’s US operation at the former Jonabell Farm in Lexington.

Blessed with a sizable stable he’d just shipped north from Fair Grounds in New Orleans and added to with young horses off the farm and older horses returning from layups, Walsh didn’t blink.

“We were swamped but what was I going to say?” he said. “So of course I said, ‘yeah, yeah, we’ve got room.’ Then I had to beg for stalls at Keeneland. They were good to me though and thankfully gave me some. That was a good problem to have. It would be a lot worse if it was the other way around.”

One of the two-year-olds who walked into his usual spot in Barn 24 in the Keeneland stable area was Maxfield, the second foal out of the Bernardini mare Velvety and a grandson of the multiple graded stakes-winning Harbor View Farm homebred Caress who Sheikh Mohammed bought for $3.1 million in 2000.

Maxfield impressed in the spring and early summer, breezing on a six- and seven-day schedule, throwing in the occasional bullet work and ramping up to steady half-mile moves by mid-July. Walsh thought he’d be ready to run by early summer before the 16.3hh colt said otherwise.

“The only little hiccup we had with him was July,” Walsh said. “He was nearly ready to go to the races, we got a little serious with him and one day it just looked like it was starting to be just a tick too much for him. I thought, ‘we probably need to back off this horse just a little bit’.”

Walsh slowed down just a bit, with Godolphin’s blessing, and set his sights on September: “There were no questions asked,” Walsh said. “And it really helped him. He got an awful lot stronger come September and now into October. He’s really filled out, gotten stronger on his top line and everything. He still has a bit of growing and definitely some filling out to do. He’ll be a good-looking horse in six months time.”

Maxfield looked good in the Breeders’ Futurity at Keeneland, blowing past a field that included highly regarded Saratoga maiden winners Gouverneur Morris, Tap It To Win and Enforceable and graded stakes winner By Your Side.

Maxfield goes in the Grade 1 TVG Breeders' Cup Juvenile at Santa Anita on Friday \

Keeneland Photo

Walsh breezed Maxfield a half in 48.60secs last Friday week at Keeneland and 47.80secs in company yesterday morning at Keeneland. He’ll travel with his two Breeders’ Cup runners by plane to Southern California.

“We’ll be moving horses here at Keeneland (to make way for horses in the November breeding stock sales) so I thought I better get out of the way or I’d be driving people crazy.

“It’s better that I just go with those two horses out there for the week,” Walsh said. “We’re hopeful. If they show up and get a good run they’ve got good chances. Off their last two runs they’ve both got very high chances in their races.”