This was just a Test. It was only a Test. A test of champions.
Saturday’s 148th running of the grade 1 Belmont brought 13 colts to contest the final leg of the triple crown.
Preakness winner Exaggerator was the default favorite coming off the crown race win three weeks earlier.
He ran decently for a mile in the Belmont but then quit. The Derby winner Nyquist stayed home altogether given his preference for more reasonable race distances.
So, we got a good old-fashioned Belmont with no crown on the line. It was just a $1.5 million race at a mile and a half in the muggy warmth that came down the way most tests of these types do: with tactics.
Creator watched as his newfound stablemate Gettysburg ran too fast up front for the first four furlongs (48 and 2). Creator’s jock Irad Ortiz Jr. knew in advance he’d get a tailor-made pace and he pounced late with a skillful steer between horses in the home stretch to catch Destin at the wire.
Just a week earlier, the big racing operation WinStar Farm had caused a bit of a stir when it moved Gettysburg from the barn of Todd Pletcher into the custody of Steve Asmussen to set up the scenario that in retrospect appears to be a brilliant move despite a longer-term potential to ruffle feathers.
A master at avoiding controversy, Pletcher must have had to muster serious strength from within to avoid expressing aggravation about WinStar’s pre-race intervention and really – intrusion – into the well-laid plans of his prestigious barn.
WinStar plucked Gettysburg from Pletcher’s care and put the colt in the hands of Asmussen. Pletcher didn’t believe Gettysburg belonged in the race. Neither did the racing public which looked at his PP’s and made him a 55 to 1 shot. But WinStar wanted a sacrificial pace-setter to create a better race shape for Creator and got exactly that.
These types of maneuvers happen quite often in horse racing but for it to play out before such a big race – and for it to directly involve two elite trainers with competing interests is compelling. WinStar likely bruised Pletcher’s feelings and perhaps their relationship but took down a big Crown race in the meantime.
WinStar produces too many good entrants for Pletcher to risk making a scene. I guess you could you could argue he’d have participated in the switch had the shoe been on the other foot. But a small segment of the racing fandom which puts animal health at the top of their priority list will watch Gettysburg now to see how he bounces back after weaving late in a race he was asked to do something that might have been beyond his capability.
The two races preceding the Belmont produced impressive victories by Flintshire (Manhattan) and Frosted (Met Mile).
Flintshire is expected to race in the states for the balance of the calendar year. The Saudi Arabian prince who owns him wants a US campaign for the six-year-old turf superstar because American grass courses typically come up firm which is to Flintshire’s liking. Flintshire’s racing schedule leading up to this year’s Breeder’s Cup in Arcadia, CA will be mapped out by the best young trainer in America Chad Brown. Among the races Brown may consider for Flintshire between now and the Cup would be the Arlington Million in mid-August or the Sword Dancer two weeks later. There’s a rich 12 furlong turf race at Kentucky Downs in mid-September that also might be of interest to Brown and the Prince.
While it was no surprise to me that Flintshire got the easy win Saturday, I did not expect Frosted to dominate the Met Mile as he did. He covered the 8 panels in a very fast 1:32.73. Frosted is coming off a failed effort to take down the Dubai World Cup which can often have lasting negative impact on career resumption but he was a blur down the stretch and was assigned a 123 Beyer number which is a massive indication he defied the post-Dubai slump.
We had a really good crew up in section 3T for this one. NYRA has leveraged the public’s love of seeing a Crown winner into gradual ticket price hikes. It’s now $110 face per on the block of twenty tix our pal Carsoni locks into in the Belmont grandstand. It sounds like a lot of dough for a race track ticket but part of that number factors in the prospect of a Crown shot.
NYRA seems to have sorted out the transportation and refreshment logistics, so you pay the gate and have a good time on a big racing day.
I saw some sporadic escalator outages. The wi-fi didn’t work and slews of seats inside the cavernous innards of the Belmont grandstand were covered in what looked like decades-old gull dung. But in fairness to NYRA, the important stuff all seemed to come together. This is the second year in a row of a successfully staged Belmont after a string of botch jobs.
The announced attendance figure was 60,114 (paid). There was probably no more than 50-grand in the house. We darted for the train immediately after the feature and were Manhattan-bound in no time.
LIRR workers were stationed at the track’s on/off ramp to punch tickets. If they wanted to move the crowd even faster, they could probably go honor system without losing much if any revenue.
A day after the Belmont on the opposite coast, the 57-year-old jockey Russell Baze said he was ending his long, unparalleled career. After riding a filly named Wahine Warrior in the 10th race at Golden Gate on Sunday, Baze announced his immediate retirement. Baze had not made his intention public in advance. He racked up 12,842 wins over a 42-year stretch. It’s a victory number that will never be topped. Wahine Warrior finished in a dead-heat for second in Baze’s final ride. She was claimed for 16K and now merits some degree of fame for taking Baze to the gate one last time.
-I wouldn’t bother mentioning it if Golden State had won game 5 but it bugs me that the NBA handed down the flagrant 1 on Draymond Green almost 48 hours after the fact to trigger the one-game ban Green served Tuesday night. LeBron was the clear aggressor and initiator of contact late in game 4 as he tangled up with Green. The King went further to the wrong by stepping on top of Green in a menacing way. Yeah, Green took a swipe that missed as he came to his feet, but this skirmish was a pretty clear attempt by LeBron James to bait a hook. At best, it was a double personal, with perhaps a T for the King. I have no horse in this race, in fact I wouldn’t mind seeing Cleveland win a championship given that city’s long drought. But it looks horrible for Adam Silver and the League to go this route with the series 3-1. It bolsters the notion they’ll pull shenanigans to make it go 7. Yeah, Green piled up the T’s up to that point, but let him push himself over the edge. You can let the King manipulate his own organization as he wants but don’t let his reach extend into matters of League discipline.