Two down, one to go, and making history won’t be easy. NYRA released a list of 11 potential Belmont Stakes starters shortly after California Chrome won the Preakness Stakes, including Kentucky Derby runner-up Commanding Curve and third-place finisher Danza. They’ll be fresh, as will Wicked Strong (fourth in the Derby) and Samraat (fifth). Ride on Curlin and Social Inclusion, second and third in the Preakness, are also possible for the Belmont, as are Commissioner, Intense Holiday, Kid Cruz, and Peter Pan winner Tonalist.
California Chrome was given a Beyer speed figure of 105 and a new career-top TimeformUS figure of 116 for his Preakness performance. He won his sixth straight race with another perfect trip and yet another display of his awesome ability to accelerate turning into the stretch. “He’s a freak of nature,” trainer Bob Baffert told HRTV after his starter, Bayern, finished ninth in the Preakness. “Nobody’s been able to run with him late.” Call it the California kick.
“It was a crazy race,†said jockey Victor Espinoza said afterwards, about the tactical decisions he had to make. “I got more tired mentally than physically.â€
The Preakness winner and runner-up were reported to be in good shape on Sunday morning. Trainer Art Sherman hasn’t settled on a plan for California Chrome leading into the Belmont, but said the colt may breeze once before.
One morning last week, Sherman, an impish 77 years old, leaned against a white-railed fence outside a horse barn at Pimlico Race Course. “That Secretariat, what a great horse he was,” he said. “I remember watching him run. All these years I’m thinking, I wonder if I’ll ever have a horse like that.” In the early morning light, Sherman shoved his hands a little deeper into the pockets of his green windbreaker, and looked over the top of his eyeglasses. “Well now,” he said, “maybe I do.” And then he smiled his little crooked smile, full of the impossible.
Chuckas plans to propose that the Kentucky Derby remain on the first Saturday in May, with the Preakness Stakes moving to the first weekend in June, and the Belmont Stakes to the first weekend in July. It’s not a new idea — every year, the Triple Crown schedule comes in for criticism as too quick, too demanding, too old-fashioned. Here’s Pat Forde making that argument:
The bleakness of this Preakness field emphasizes a fundamental flaw in thoroughbred racing’s Triple Crown. It is run on an outdated calendar. The turnaround from the first Saturday in May to the third Saturday in May is not something most thoroughbred owners and trainers are interested in trying.
If the Triple Crown is primarily about finding and celebrating a horse who can win all three races — if it’s mostly about the breed, and for us, the game’s most devoted fans and participants — then the series probably should be changed. A schedule that goes four weeks between starts fits how elite horses race now. Tradition has to serve a purpose, or it’s just a fetish.
But I wonder if we’d lose the season, the closest thing on the American racing calendar to a festival, and if we would miss it, the big circus moving from track to track, the one time of the year that the excitement of racing — the possibility of seeing something special — captures the imagination of the broader public. Whatever else the Triple Crown is, it’s a curiosity. Changing the schedule could make it an irrelevance. We might get a Triple Crown winner out of the deal, but we might be the only people partying.
The Derby is the most famous of races, but the Preakness the most revealing … saying that the Preakness distance is more reflective of today’s racing than the Belmont’s doesn’t imply that the 1 3/16 miles at Pimlico, still very long by quotidian standards, is any less testing. Bold Forbes, who won both the Derby and Belmont, couldn’t last in the 1976 Preakness after taking a clear advantage into the stretch. In the Triple Crown, the Preakness, quite simply, is most likely to be a truly run race, and its outcome most likely to reverberate with significance. That’s why 60 percent of its winners since 1964 have been champions and why Saturday’s 139th will define both this year’s Triple Crown and California Chrome.
