Quick Post-Belmont Notes
Afleet Alex: There are no questions left about this colt. He can get the distance. He has more than one move. He’s agile and powerful. “Where did he come from?,” a woman standing next to me shouted as Alex crossed the finish line and the crowd cheered. He came from ninth just before the mile mark to first at the stretch and blew by the competition with incredible ease, winning by seven lengths. It was a thrilling performance.
Giacomo: Finished seventh, a showing that makes his Kentucky Derby victory look all the flukier now, given that the likes of maiden starter Nolan’s Cat finished third and Indy Storm, an N1X allowance winner, finished fourth. Giacomo made an uncharacteristically early move in the race as well, briefly taking the lead at the half mile. That’s no way to win the Belmont.
Andromeda’s Hero: Finished second. Obviously, he liked the distance, but when will he get the chance to run a mile and a half again?
Reverberate: Finished tenth. I guess he was tired. This is a nice colt, though, and after a rest, he should be back in form for the Travers.
Afleet Alex, Giacomo Exercise
Afleet Alex went out for a two mile jog on Wednesday, in his first trip to the track since winning the Preakness last Saturday. “He was a touch stiff the first mile, which was to be expected,” said trainer Tim Ritchey. “But by the time he was jogging the second mile, his ears were up and he was jogging forward and striding right out.” (Thoroughbred Times)
Derby winner Giacomo jogged Wednesday at Hollywood Park. Trainer John Shirreffs still isn’t saying whether or not Giacomo will race in the Belmont. “It’s hard to say whether he will run. We just got him home. He’s got to ship all the way across the country to get there.” (Blood-Horse)
Maryland Stewards “Clueless”
Paul Moran is ferocious in his indictment of the Maryland stewards for ruling that jockey Ramon Dominguez was not at fault in the incident at the top of in the stretch in the Preakness, when Scrappy T reacted to being struck on the left by veering sharply to the right and running into Afleet Alex:
The beauty of being a steward in Maryland is that people are paying attention only one day a year. So, rather than concern themselves with suspensions, hearings and appeals, the Pimlico stewards decided Dominguez would be held blameless for the incident and that there would be no suspension for careless riding. Obviously, they determined that delineation exists between careless and incompetent and that incompetence is within the rules.
Had Afleet Alex fallen, had jockey Jeremy Rose been left face down in the dirt and carried off the racetrack, had Dominguez left a pile of fallen horses in his wake, would he have been held blameless? Is he exonerated by perhaps the most amazing recovery by horse and rider in Triple Crown history? Is Dominguez’s responsibility erased by the heroic efforts of the horse and rider he came one gush of adrenaline and one instinctive athletic reaction in the face of sheer terror away from putting on the ground in the path of a dozen large, hooved animals?
Dominguez should have been handed a suspension long enough to flirt with his eligibility for Social Security, and the failure of the Maryland stewards is a ludicrous abdication of responsibility. (Newsday)
Jay Hovdey takes a more measured tone: “There was nothing in the rules or guidelines used by Pimlico’s stewards that holds anyone accountable for what happened in the Preakness. But there should be.” (Daily Racing Form — sub. req.)
Preakness Remainders
Afleet Alex earned a 112 Beyer speed figure in the Preakness. “The Preakness was as legitimate a race as the Derby was flukey.” (Daily Racing Form — sub. req.)
More bad luck for trainer Nick Zito: It was discovered Monday that Noble Causeway “entrapped his epiglottis” during the Preakness. The colt will have a myectomy. (Blood-Horse)
Wilko is also having surgery. Trainer Craig Dollase said the Breeders’ Cup juvenile winner came out of the Preakness with a chip in his right front ankle. He’ll have surgery on Thursday to remove it. (Daily Racing Form)
There’ll be no Triple Crown this year, which has NYRA officials plotting how to attract crowds to a race that suddenly seems a little irrelevant. They shouldn’t worry, writes Rick Bozich:
This time the Belmont Stakes will have to hustle for love, headlines and TV viewers. This time the Belmont will have to sell more than another faux Triple Crown contender.
Fine.
We all know how those Triple Crown buildups turned out. Lots of trips down memory lane for Steve Cauthen. No new members of the Triple Crown club. Six of the last eight years we’ve hit Belmont wondering whether racing would celebrate its first Triple Crown winner since Cauthen scored on Affirmed in 1978. Six times no champagne was popped.
This year the fairy tale ended three weeks earlier. Giacomo, the Kentucky Derby winner, finished third, nearly 10 lengths behind the unflappable Afleet Alex in the Preakness.
Fine.
Why do I keep saying everything will be all right? Easy. This time the plot lines will be enchanting without being predictable. (Courier Journal)
Dominguez Not at Fault
After reviewing the race, Maryland stewards determined that jockey Ramon Dominguez wasn’t at fault for the incident at the top of the stretch in the Preakness, when he struck Scrappy T and the horse veered into Afleet Alex’s path. “He hit him one time,” said steward Bill Passmore. “How many horses do you hit left-handed and they don’t move?” (Washington Post)
Dominguez apologized immediately after the race, and Jeremy Rose graciously accepted. Trainer Tim Ritchey was noticeably more upset that day and the next, but even he won’t say much more than, “My father said a long time ago that if you don’t have anything good to say about anybody, don’t say anything.” It was a display of good sportsmanship all around. Peter Schmuck thinks an opportunity was missed:
Everybody acts like it’s business as usual, and an opportunity to turn the moment into a week of highlights on SportsCenter vanished faster than the bankrolls of all the people who put their trust in my handicapping ability at The Sun’s snazzy tent party earlier in the day.
There is a reason that NASCAR is the fastest-growing major sport in America and horse racing is struggling to hold on to its audience. If this were a stock car race, there would have been a rumble on pit road and everybody would be talking about it for days….
Don’t they realize that we live in a sports world that thrives on conflict and controversy? Didn’t they get the memo about the importance of being orneriest?
The same kind of move in the Daytona 500 would have caused a 20-car pileup — and created the kind of emotion that can turn a sporting event into a passion play.
Rose and Dominguez took the higher road — and maybe that’s what makes horse racing the great sport it is — but it sure doesn’t sell T-shirts. (Baltimore Sun)
Conflict and controversy — doesn’t Schmuck follow racing headlines? The sport has enough of both. We need more displays of good behavior from owners, trainers, and jockeys like the ones we’ve seen post-Kentucky Derby and Preakness.
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Jessica Chapel writes and edits in Massachusetts. Railbird is a Thoroughbred horse racing blog published from June 2004 to July 2019. More / Contact
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