Russell Baze was a little past halfway through his career when his Northern California contemporary, Tom Chapman, retired from riding in 1996. Over the past 20 years, Chapman has nurtured a fine reputation as an artist of sporting scenes, especially horse racing, so he was asked if he’d ever crafted a portrait of the man who has ridden more than 12,000 winners.
“No, but I know I could paint his backside from memory,” Chapman replied. “I spent enough time looking at it.”
Creator’s final strides, nose victory over Destin in the Belmont Stakes means there were three different winners in this year’s Triple Crown races. Yep. Very, very unlike last year.
But there is a potential silver lining.
Although we don’t have another Triple Crown winner like American Pharoah to celebrate, Creator’s victory does set up an interesting second half of the year for this group of 3-year-olds.
Time again for us Yanks to get all excited about Royal Ascot, that five-day exercise in genetic privilege and excessive champagne consumption that masquerades as serious horse racing.
What happens at Royal Ascot stays at Royal Ascot, except for the colorful public behaviors that proliferate on all forms of social media and in the rabid tabloid pages of the British press.
It is no big deal that the Derby winner won’t be showing up for the 148th Belmont Stakes on Saturday in New York. It happens all the time, most recently in 2012, when I’ll Have Another nursed his bum ankle back at the barn while Union Rags and Paynter put on a show.
In 2014 and 2015, a newly constructed Belmont Stakes Day was dominated by the suspense of whether a Derby and Preakness winner could complete the first Triple Crown since 1978. This year, with no crown on the line, it may be easier to appreciate the enormity of a card that has turned into the second-richest day on the American racing calendar.
A length and a quarter, as measured by horse racing, isn’t really that much in the wider world. It’s a few strides across the living room, or the height of a garden shed. The average bank line is longer. Laid out on a green, even the weekend golfer would expect to sink the putt.
And yet a length and a quarter is the difference between Exaggerator going for a Triple Crown on Saturday in the 148th Belmont Stakes and Exaggerator simply trying to prove that his Preakness victory was not just another romp in the slop he supposedly needs to be at his best.
It says a lot about Beholder that the biggest nitpick anyone can seem to come up with concerning her victory in Saturday’s Vanity Mile at Santa Anita is that she was right on top of a slow early pace of 25.03 and 49.31 seconds.
Well, they weren’t exactly setting the Teletimer ablaze in the Vanity. That is true. But if that is the strongest criticism anyone has about what Beholder did Saturday, she’s doing great.
Racing is so bereft of innovation that new ideas are especially welcome even if they are flawed. Exhibit A is The Stronach Group’s new Pegasus World Cup, scheduled for Jan. 28 with a $12 million purse that would make it the world’s richest – and weirdest – race.
The name of the race is familiar, the players are choice, and the pot is right for the $400,000 Vanity on Saturday at Santa Anita Park, featuring champions Beholder and Stellar Wind. But why will the starting gate be sitting in the wrong place?
Welcome to the first running of the Vanity Mile, the latest rearrangement of well-worn chairs on the deck of the leaky liner that is the Southern California stakes schedule since the closure of Hollywood Park.
At a key point during the stretch run of last Monday’s $300,000 Gamely Stakes at Santa Anita, Michael McCarthy’s attention became sorely divided.
“ ‘Scattered’ is a good way to describe it,” said McCarthy, whose primary concern was the forward momentum of Illuminant, the filly he trains for Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners.
With a furlong to run in the 1 1/8-mile event, Illuminant and Flavien Prat were going great guns on the lead. But the field was bearing down, led by heavily favored Wekeela.
