As the spring classics approach, the big differences this year between the 3-year-old male and 3-year-old female divisions come into sharp focus.
This entirely likeable 3-year-old male crop has two sensational, undefeated colts in Justify and Magnum Moon who are perhaps the biggest threats we’ve ever seen to end the streak born in 1882 of every Kentucky Derby winner since then having raced at 2.
On April 21, 1951, Counterpoint, who began the year as a maiden, finished second in the Ben Ali Handicap. Five days later he was fourth in the Blue Grass, then, on May 5, he finished 11th of 20 in the Kentucky Derby. Things got better, and by the end of the season he was Horse of the Year.
In a 19-day period between April 13 and May 2, 1942, Alsab, the reigning 2-year-old champ, finished second in the Chesapeake Trial, second in the Chesapeake Stakes, third in the Derby Trial, and second in the Kentucky Derby. One week later he won the Preakness.
If there is any consolation at all to the death of Bill Nack last Friday night, it is found in the likely fact that his work will receive the customary post-mortem bump in attention enjoyed by all great artists.
So, for those who have not let their reading of Nack stray far beyond his biography of Secretariat, “Big Red of Meadow Stable,” or his valediction “Pure Heart” upon the death of the great Triple Crown champion, here are some suggestions from his Sports Illustrated years now that his voice has been silenced and all the evidence is in:
While many of us muse about the 136-year Kentucky Derby streak against horses who did not race at 2 and whether it might end this year, how about really pushing convention to the edge, and consider the possibility of an unraced-at-2 exacta this year?
The chance of it happening is live. It’s actually very live.
By this weekend, nearly all of the horses and people relocated to Del Mar these past four months will have returned to San Luis Rey, where imposing new Clearspan barns have risen from the ashes of the seven smaller barns destroyed in the Lilac fire of last Dec. 7 that burned 4,100 North San Diego County acres and took the lives of 46 horses stabled at the training center.
The Oaklawn Handicap, once the highlight of its own Oaklawn Park afternoon, has been upstaged on the same program by the Arkansas Derby since 2012. No matter. For those who prefer their racehorses of a more mature vintage, Saturday’s running of the Oaklawn Handicap promises to provide all the diversion required, even though Sunday’s headlines will be monopolized by the 3-year-old event. Youth must be served.
Mike Smith followed his Derby-Oaks double last Saturday at Santa Anita with a trip to Keeneland on Sunday, where he finished third in the Beaumont Stakes with the California-based filly Uppercut. While there, Smith joined with fellow riders taking phone calls for the nationwide telethon in support of the Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund, an effort that raised more than $200,000.
For many, the inclination seems to be to stress that he got away with an easy, uncontested early lead over a small field short on real competition, and that circumstances will be dramatically different on many levels in the Kentucky Derby than they were in Saturday’s Santa Anita Derby. And the unmistakable inference here is he will be exposed at Churchill Downs.
But I think that misses the real point, which is that Justify proved in his decisive victory over Bolt d’Oro in the Santa Anita Derby that he is absolutely, without question, the real deal.
Thirty horses qualify as a herd, by any standards, and what a handsome herd it will be going postward across the American landscape Saturday afternoon when the Wood Memorial, Blue Grass, and Santa Anita Derby unite in a single afternoon of madcap Kentucky Derby previews.
