Greeley’s Preakness?
In recent years, the Kentucky Derby winner would be an automatic favorite for the Preakness. Not this spring. Giacomo is on almost everyone’s do-not pick list. Andy Beyer is particularly brusque in his dismissal of the gray colt’s chances to take the second leg of the Triple Crown:
Beyer likes Greeley’s Galaxy, as do Ray Kerrison and Steve Haskin. They all point to his “monster move” halfway through the Derby, when Galaxy came within four lengths of the leaders, and his good workouts in the past couple of weeks. (Although Haskin admits to feeling a little less confident after Galaxy’s “wild work” this morning.) The colt’s Derby move was visually impressive, a nice flash of speed and talent, but I don’t see how anyone can interpret that to suggest he’s better than, say, Giacomo. Galaxy made up eight lengths between the second and third call, and then almost as quickly fell back four. Giacomo rallied at the same time, made up nine and a half lengths, and kept going.
But can Giacomo win the Preakness? “He’s been improving all along,” said trainer John Shirreffs. “But it’s such a short time between races until the Preakness, it’s hard to gauge where he is.” And that’s the problem with Giacomo. There’s not enough in his record to ascertain what kind of horse he is or hint at the race he’ll run. He’ll be a factor, he might even win; I can’t toss him out completely. I’m not alone thinking like this: “The attitude toward Giacomo is ambivalence, wait and see at best.”
