Division title for male 3-year-olds will be story of second half

ELMONT, N.Y. – For the second straight year, the Triple Crown races produced three different winners, once again leaving the 3-year-old male division title ripe for anyone who can put together a sustained, winning campaign the second half of the year.

Always Dreaming, Cloud Computing, and Tapwrit – winners of the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes, respectively – have won the division’s biggest races so far, and if each stays on course over the next two months-plus, they will meet in the Travers Stakes at Saratoga on Aug. 26.

But little has been predictable about this group, so even hoping all three make a race that far away seems overly optimistic. In addition, there are a number of candidates, such as Classic Empire, last year’s champ of this group at age 2, who already own a Grade 1 win the first half of the year and seem quite capable of making a major push the second half.

And that doesn’t even include the true late developers who have yet to win a graded stakes, such as West Coast, who won the Easy Goer on Saturday on the Belmont undercard, earning a 99 Beyer Speed Figure that wasn’t much off the 103 Tapwrit got in the Belmont.

A year ago at this time, Arrogate owned only a maiden win, a victory earned just six days before the Belmont. Yet his brilliant campaign the second half of the season made him the unquestioned divisional winner.

This year, like last year - after all the Derby prep races and the Triple Crown itself - the Eclipse Award is for the taking.

Todd Pletcher, who trains Always Dreaming, thinks the Derby winner is the pro-tem leader. He’s biased, but he’s also right. Always Dreaming won the most prestigious race of the division, plus the Florida Derby, making him the only 3-year-old male to have won two Grade 1 races this year.

“The Kentucky Derby has added weight,” Pletcher said of the divisional race. “But the summer and fall will have a lot to say about that. Most of the time the second half of the year carries more weight than the first half of the year.”

Pletcher said Always Dreaming is scheduled to make his next start in either the Jim Dandy at Saratoga on July 29 or the Haskell at Monmouth on July 30; those two races are also under consideration for Tapwrit. Pletcher would prefer not to run them against each other before the Travers, “but there’s time to figure all that out,” Pletcher said.

Cloud Computing is being pointed to the Jim Dandy. His trainer, Chad Brown, also has the unbeaten Timeline, winner of the Peter Pan Stakes, pointing to the Pegasus at Monmouth on June 18, with the Haskell to follow.

Arkansas Derby winner Classic Empire, who was second in the Preakness and then was forced to miss the Belmont with a foot abscess, is also being pointed to the Haskell, and then the Travers. If he – or anyone – were to win those two races, they’d be right on top.

Wood Memorial winner Irish War Cry, second in the Belmont, has the Haskell as his next objective.

“That’s always been the goal,” his trainer, Graham Motion, said the day after the Belmont.

West Coast is another potential starter in the Haskell, a race his trainer, Bob Baffert, has won eight times.

“He’s ready to take on the top races,” Baffert said after the Easy Goer.

Baffert last year engineered Arrogate's brilliant second-half campaign, and while it would be folly to suggest Baffert’s top 3-year-olds this year have that kind of world-class ability, he showed he knows the template for capturing a divisional title in a year like this.

Baffert needs to sort out how to manage not only West Coast but American Anthem, who won the Woody Stephens on the Belmont undercard. Three years ago, Baffert won the Stephens with Bayern, who came back and won the Haskell and at year’s end won the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

McCraken, whose victory over Tapwrit in the Sam Davis has been flattered in subsequent weeks, will try to bounce back from an eighth-place finish in the Derby when he runs Saturday in the Matt Winn at Churchill Downs, a race that could propel him to the Jim Dandy and then the Travers.

Two years ago, when American Pharoah won the Triple Crown, the Eclipse Award was safely stored before the fiscal new year. This year, like last year, opportunity abounds.