Watchmaker: Sizing up a 3-year-old male division in flux

It has been a busy few days in the 3-year-old male division, and that’s true without even knowing what happened in Sunday afternoon’s Haskell Invitational at Monmouth as this column is a Sunday morning thing.

Of course, the big news (even though it was really not news to anyone) was the official retirement of Triple Crown winner Justify. Justify’s retirement will have absolutely no Eclipse Award impact because if you sweep the Triple Crown, you should be a unanimous choice for a divisional title and a slam dunk for Horse of the Year. But Justify’s retirement does leave such important and rich races on the table as next month’s Travers and the Pennsylvania Derby in September.

And over the last few days, and even before the Haskell, we’ve gotten some clues as to how those races might shape up, specifically in Tenfold’s win in Saturday’s Jim Dandy at Saratoga, Hofburg’s victory in Friday’s Curlin at Saratoga, and Wonder Gadot’s second straight thrashing of Canadian-bred males in last Tuesday’s Prince of Wales Stakes at Fort Erie.

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Let’s take a look at each development individually:

• I’m certain the connections of Tenfold, and the Jim Dandy’s second- and third-place finishers, Flameaway and Vino Rosso, would disagree, but the Jim Dandy was an ugly race.

Tenfold drifted out badly through the stretch. On one hand, you could say that by doing that, he made things much more difficult for himself than they had to be. On the other hand, the Jim Dandy was Tenfold’s sixth career start, and this sort of stuff should be behind him by now. In any case, Tenfold can’t expect to get away with this act and succeed when he ostensibly faces better competition in the Travers.

Flameaway set a fairly solid pace in the Jim Dandy and continued on gamely to save the place while being beaten less than a length. But his effort, and by extension the Jim Dandy in general, was put in interesting perspective when trainer Mark Casse in post-race comments said the filly Wonder Gadot would be the barn’s prime representative in the Travers, not necessarily Flameaway.

Vino Rosso finished third in the Jim Dandy with a late rush that was as much a trick of the eye as anything else. The Jim Dandy’s final time of 1:50.49 resulted in an uninspiring preliminary Beyer Speed Figure of only 93, meaning Vino Rosso was given just about all afternoon to get there and didn’t. But the most troubling thing about Vino Rosso’s effort Saturday was he was so disinterested early, lagging far back, it almost looked like he was sulking.

And then there was Sporting Chance, who, despite the addition of blinkers, took his bear-out stretch antics to such new extremes that this time, he was pulled up. You have to wonder what else Sporting Chance has to do to be put on a stewards’ list, which would be a pretty shocking turn for a Hopeful Stakes winner.

• Hofburg beat only four very limited opponents in the Curlin, but he was still substantially more impressive than the Jim Dandy crew, and not only because he earned a 100 Beyer. As was the case on a soggy Thursday, Friday’s sloppy/sealed main track at Saratoga was strongly biased toward speed horses (Saturday’s Saratoga main track also seemed tilted toward speed early, but the bias abated at least to some extent as the track dried out during the afternoon). So, Hofburg not only won off by five with a solid Beyer while leaving the strong impression he hasn’t even come close to peaking yet, he did so while beating a pretty strong track bias. He gets bonus points for that.

• Wonder Gadot, who hung repeatedly earlier this year in some major spots, very possibly costing herself the win in the Kentucky Oaks, has been a different horse since getting blinkers two starts back. With blinkers, she ran away with the Queen’s Plate on Woodbine’s synthetic main track, and she did the same on a sloppy dirt surface in the Prince of Wales, crushing males yet again. Wonder Gadot adds some needed spice to the Travers picture, and should she win it, she’d present an interesting counterpoint in a 3-year-old filly division that Monomoy Girl, and her successive Grade 1 victories in the Ashland, Kentucky Oaks, Acorn, and Coaching Club American Oaks, keeps on doing her best to settle.

Other Saturday notes:

• The male sprint division got a big shuffle on Saturday with Imperial Hint being a most impressive winner of Saratoga’s Grade 1 Alfred G. Vanderbilt and Ransom the Moon walloping defending divisional champ Roy H in the Grade 1 Bing Crosby at Del Mar.

Imperial Hint, who finished second to Roy H in last fall’s Breeders’ Cup Sprint, inhaled his Vanderbilt field with a quick, wide move late on the far turn and ran off to score by as many lengths as he wanted, which could have been a lot more than the 3 3/4 lengths he did win by because he was never asked to run. This was a “Wow!” performance.

Ransom the Moon was the luckiest horse on the planet when he beat Roy H in last year’s Crosby, where he charged through a gaping hole on the inside while Roy H was carried out to the parking lot into the stretch. But this time, Ransom the Moon was clearly the better horse as he blew past Roy H through the stretch to win by just more than two lengths, going away.

I don’t want to be too tough on Roy H as this was his first start since finishing third in the Dubai Golden Shaheen in late March. However, as deserving a champion as he was last year, Roy H did capitalize on strong outside track biases when he won the Breeders’ Cup Sprint and True North, and he was flat in Dubai. His grip on his division has now been loosened, and with Mind Your Biscuits currently focusing on going longer in the Whitney, Army Mule out with an injury, and City of Light needing to show where he is at when he returns to sprinting in next month’s Forego after going long in his last two, it can be argued that Imperial Hint is now the ranking male sprinter in the country.

• I realize Saratoga’s Bowling Green was run on soft turf, meaning you have to be careful reading too much into the result. But the Bowling Green only increased my distress over the status of our male turf division. Without intending to take anything away from the dead-heat winners Channel Maker and Glorious Empire, it is still a point of fact that Glorious Empire ran for a $65,000 claiming tag at Delaware Park in his last start and ran for $50,000 and $62,500 tags five and six starts back, with three dismal stakes attempts sandwiched in between.

• Promises Fulfilled was very good in winning Saratoga’s Amsterdam, the local prelude to next month’s Grade 1 H. Allen Jerkens Memorial. For the first time, Promises Fulfilled showed he can concede the early lead and still be very effective. That said, he prompted a scorching early pace and still drew off strongly through the stretch.

One of the nice byproducts of Promises Fulfilled’s win was it gave trainer Dale Romans the opportunity to say something in post-race winner’s quotes to the NYRA press staff that is so true and applies to horseman and horseplayer alike.

“In this game, you just don’t know,” Romans said. “I’ve been saying I haven’t won a race in a month, been having the blues the last week or two. All you need is to win at Saratoga, and life is good again.”