Jerardi: Make no mistakes with lone speed

When exactly did being loose on the lead become a bad thing?

If you came of age playing this game as I did at Pimlico in the late 1970s and early 1980s, you very quickly understood the value of uncontested early speed. Thankfully, most of the jockeys riding in those days at Pimlico understood what the players knew. If a horse looked like clear speed, you could generally count on it and bet with confidence.

These days, you bet lone speed /closer scenarios at your own risk. You know the bet. Eliminate the chasers, find the best closer, bet your exacta, and return later to collect your winnings.

Too many jockeys today, however, either don’t understand the inherent tactical advantage, can’t read a race correctly, get overly cautious instructions from risk-averse trainers or some combination of all three. It is apparently an epidemic at Belmont Park. I bet a few races there recently and watched my jockey on the only speed either not make the lead at all or barely make it, keep all the closers in the race and invariably get beat.

Andy Serling calls if the “Land of Grab” and I can see why.

Where have you gone, Rick Wilson and P Val?

All of today’s jockeys should be made to watch a never-ending loop of Angel Cordero on Bold Forbes in the 1976 Belmont Stakes and Gary Stevens on Winning Colors in the 1988 Kentucky Derby. That is how you ride a speed horse.

You don’t win by going as slowly as possible under pressure and then run away from the field. You win by running away from the field, killing the chasers, and maybe getting a little tired late, but not too tired to win.

Three days before the Belmont Stakes, I was having dinner in midtown Manhattan with a large group, some of whom I had known for years and a few that I had just met. We were naturally discussing the race and American Pharoah.

The strategy, I said, was obvious. The Derby and Preakness winner was the best horse with a huge tactical advantage as the only speed. One of the people I had just met, who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty, did not want the see the horse on the lead as it was just too hard to win that way.

I was incredulous, but did not say anything, secure in the knowledge that Bob Baffert knew better and would explain to Victor Espinoza that if he wasn’t on the lead with American Pharoah he would be banished from his barn forevermore.

The Belmont Stakes was essentially over after the first quarter mile. American Pharoah was loose, relaxed, and not going very fast. I would not have cared if the colt had been going a bit faster. I actually think he would have won by more, but when you have a rare talent like American Pharoah, everything but the trip is probably irrelevant.

When American Pharoah drew the 1 hole in the Preakness, the clueless thought it was a bad thing. Jerry Bailey told a bunch of us two days before the Preakness that it he had been able to choose a post for AP, the 1 is the post he would have chosen.

The post really made Espinoza go. He said after the race he decided to send when the monsoon came. Baffert said he told his jockey for days that he should put the horse on the lead. The result, like the Belmont Stakes, was a blowout.

I had a great Preakness Day because of American Pharoah. No, I did not have the American Pharoah-Tale of Verve exacta. But I did make a very nice score in the Sir Barton Stakes on the undercard. Fame and Power, trained by Baffert, had the 1 post going a mile and a sixteenth. He looked like lone speed, he was getting blinkers, and I felt certain Baffert would look at the race as a test drive for the Preakness.

Check out Martin Garcia’s ride. He asks Fame and Power in the first few strides to clear the field and they get there easily. Fame and Power went the half mile in 46.70 and the six furlongs in 1:10.45. He was never threatened and won powerfully.

I don’t play the game every day anymore. When I talk to my friends who do, they are incredibly frustrated. My recent Belmont experience was a small peek into their world. Thankfully, Fame and Power was there at the right time and place to make this spring almost as memorable for me at the windows as it was to cover a Triple Crown. That experience, however, was a clear exception in a world where you have to spend as much time handicapping minds as horses.