IRISH WAR CRY FAVORED IN BATTERED BELMONT
There is no Triple Crown to shoot for this year, the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes winners are skipping the Belmont Stakes, and the presumptive favorite has been scratched.
If that’s not enough to make Belmont organizers apoplectic, the 4- 1 second choice, Japanese colt Epicharis, did not train Thursday and is being treated with an anti- inflammatory for lameness in his right front hoof.
Even with problems piling up, the third and longest race of horse racing’s Triple Crown series remains an intriguing contest at 11⁄ miles. Saturday’s race 2 will field a competitive lineup of up to a dozen 3- year- olds vying for the $ 1.5 million purse, led by the new favorite, Irish War Cry, who sits at 7- 2. Lookin at Lee, the only horse to run in all three Triple Crown races, is the third choice at 5- 1.
Post time for the Belmont is 5: 37 p. m. CT ( NBC).
The Belmont loses its luster, its buzz and its crowd whenever there is no chance of a Triple Crown winner, and that has been the case half the time over the last 20 years. Two years ago, American Pharoah ended a 37- year drought with his scintillating Triple Crown victory, but it has been a tough two years since for the Belmont.
Derby winner Always Dreaming and Preakness champ Cloud Computing will skip the grueling race known as the “Test of the Champion,” meaning there will be a different champion for each of the Triple Crown races for the second year in a row.
Classic Empire, the top- ranked 3year- old in the National Thoroughbred Racing Association poll this week and the early Belmont favorite who finished fourth in the Derby and second by a nose in the Preakness, was scratched Wednesday because of an abscess in his right front hoof.
Trainer Graham Motion, who arrived at Belmont Park to find that his horse, Irish War Cry, was suddenly thrust into the spotlight as the favorite, said his New Jersey- bred colt, who finished 10th in the Kentucky Derby, is ready.
“He’s had a good couple of weeks,” Motion said. “I can honestly say this was not my original plan. After the Derby, when he ran so disappointingly, I wanted to go home and just forget about the Triple Crown, which is what the Derby does to you when you don’t run well. He breezed well last weekend, and I felt he needed to be here.”
Todd Pletcher, one of racing’s most respected and prolific trainers who’s based at Belmont Park, will send out two horses in Saturday’s 149th running of the oldest Triple Crown race. Pletcher said Louisiana Derby runner- up Patch will join stablemate Tapwrit in the race after they each worked 5 furlongs at Belmont Park last week.
Patch will have Hall of Fame jockey John Velazquez aboard. Velazquez won the Kentucky Derby aboard Pletcher’s horse Always Dreaming on May 6.