Why do Thoroughbreds so many times run to a completely different tune in the Belmont Stakes, particularly when a Triple Crown is at stake?
There's always a plan for the Triple Crown series, the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes, all run in a fast-paced five-week grind. But there's rarely a game plan that holds up, because rarely do things go as planned.
Grays and bays, chestnuts and blacker bays, Spectacular Bid and Real Quiet, Alysheba and Sunday Silence: all were great racers who all scuttled in the Belmont and lost the Crown.
Big Brown and Smarty Crash Best Laid Plans
Why did Big Brown suddenly decide to fight jockey Kent Desormeaux in Belmont 2008? Desormeaux, erring on the side of caution after the Kentucky Derby death of filly Eight Belles, pulled up the floundering Brown and lost the crown.
Why couldn't Stewart Elliott rate a vastly popular little chestnut named Smarty Jones in Belmont 2004? Rider and horse struggled against one another and caved in to an instant speed battle.
Desormeaux called Big Brown the best horse he's ever ridden, a big, easy responder who would give him turn of foot in an instant.
Elliott said Smarty was a push button wonder, capable of geared bursts of speed on demand.
Yet, these talented colts, both Kentucky Derby--Preakness Stakes titleists on the brink of capturing the twelfth Triple Crown in history, could not run the Belmont like they had been running races before it.
If he (she) runs like he has been running, relax and go when cued, nobody can beat him (her). That's the normal pre-race Belmont Stakes talk when a dual classic winner approaches the final, elusive leg of the Triple Crown series. It's become a given statement (of pure speculation, apparently) on a Thoroughbred's chances to break the Triple Crown title drought, now thirty-one years long.
There is also calculated interference.
Jess Jackson's Mission with Rachel Alexandra
Before the field for this season's Preakness Stakes was determined, the connections of steamrolling filly Rachel Alexandra handed over their prize for an undisclosed barrel of millions to Horse of the Year Curlin majority owner Jess Jackson. Jackson had the Thoroughbred gene pool in mind.
Next came speculation that the filly might be supplemented to the Preakness Stakes. Then, cries roared from the Kentucky Derby-winning camp to keep the filly out of the Triple Crown's second jewel.
Rachel's former owners didn't approve of the filly running against males, but Jackson, always a sporting man ready to risk the warm and cozy for the uncertainties of challenge, wouldn't hear of purposefully withholding the filly to protect the mathematical chances of a Triple Crown being snatched by KD champion Mine That Bird.
Jackson put his supplemental money where his intention was and the filly was tentatively in. The KD camp went off-center and openly attempted to block the filly's legal addition to the Preakness field. Rachel not only entered, she won, beating Mine That Bird by a length while the gelding was gamely driving and still gaining on her at the end.
Belmont's Result Hangs On Filly's Preakness
The third jewel of the 2009 Crown is tomorrow. Earlier in the week, Jackson announced Rachel Alexandra was fit as a fiddle for the Belmont but deserved a well-earned vacation.
She's out.
The gelding, with no chance to reproduce himself, has the filly's jockey back and will be favored to produce a win in the Belmont, a race for which he was bred and intended.
If he does win, will fans have just witnessed a slick, in-your-face, don't-push-my-filly-around trump of a twelfth Triple Crown?
BarbaraAnne Helberg - Barbara Anne Helberg, Supporter of Better Lives for Animals and Clean, Spirited, Competitive Sports
