Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Lucullan to miss Manhattan
ELMONT, N.Y. – Lucullan will miss Saturday’s Grade 1 Manhattan on the Belmont Stakes card and likely the rest of the summer after coming out of a breeze last week with an undisclosed injury.
Lucullan worked June 1 at the Greentree training track at Saratoga in what was supposed to be his final breeze for the Manhattan, but instead has been sent to Kentucky for evaluation.
“We were planning on running, but we had to send him home for a break,” said trainer Kiaran McLaughlin. “The timing is really bad.”
McLaughlin said the exact nature of Lucullan’s injury and his recovery time still were being assessed. He said he hoped Lucullan could return to his barn this fall.
The 4-year-old Lucullan, a Hard Spun colt owned by Godolphin, finished third behind Robert Bruce and Spring Quality in the Fort Marcy here at Belmont Park on May 5. Last fall, he was beaten a neck by the subsequent Grade 1 winner Yoshida in the Hill Prince Stakes.
– Marcus Hersh
Cue Tom Petty and the band
Not the 1 1/2 miles, nor the pressure of the Belmont Stakes. No, for jockeys who have swept the Triple Crown, the waiting for that final leg is the hardest part.
“You count down the days, the hours, the minutes,” Victor Espinoza, who was aboard American Pharoah in 2015, said on a national teleconference this week.
“After the Preakness, those were the longest three weeks of my riding career,” said Steve Cauthen, who piloted Affirmed in 1978.
Espinoza and Cauthen are two of the four living riders who have won the Triple Crown, along with Ron Turcotte, who was aboard Secretariat in 1973, and Jean Cruguet, who rode Seattle Slew in 1977.
Cauthen was just 18 years old in 1978. He said by Belmont Day, his main concern was that he “didn’t want to make a mistake, not let everyone down.”
When Affirmed won, he became the third Triple Crown winner in six spring campaigns.
“After he won, everyone said it was getting too easy,” Cauthen said.
Turner calls Justify ‘formidable’
Seattle Slew is the only horse to get through the Triple Crown still unbeaten, a feat Justify will try to emulate on Saturday, when he bids to become the 13th Triple Crown winner. The retired trainer Billy Turner guided Seattle Slew through that Triple Crown campaign in 1977, and thus has a unique perspective on what Justify is trying to accomplish.
“He seems to be improving with every race,” Turner said this week on a national teleconference. “He’s a formidable horse.”
Justify’s bid comes just three years after American Pharoah’s success, ending a 37-year Triple Crown drought. When Seattle Slew won, he did it four years after Secretariat ended a 25-year drought.
“Slew benefited from Secretariat bringing back the Triple Crown as a major sporting event,” Turner said.
– Jay Privman
New trophy for Triple Crown
Should Justify win the Belmont Stakes and capture the Triple Crown, his connections will be the first recipients of a new-look trophy.
Following American Pharoah’s Triple Crown sweep in 2015, Chris Kay, the president and chief executive of the New York Racing Association, wanted to redesign the Triple Crown trophy. The previous version, Kay said, was only seven inches tall “and didn’t have any distinctive nature to it.”
Kay, wanting to make the trophy more reflective of the difficult nature of winning a Triple Crown, contacted renowned sculptor Roberto Santo, who had done work for Kay at Toys “R” Us and Universal Studios.
Santo came up with a 36 1/2-inch trophy that has a larger base that leads up to the same three-sided vase with two handles on the sides. At the top is a bronze horse. The trophy weighs 45 to 50 pounds.
This will be a permanent trophy that will be put on display at different racetracks throughout the year, Kay said. Should Justify win Saturday, the owners would be given a single 26-inch
replica of the trophy, while trainer Bob Baffert would receive an 18-inch replica.
Kay said he wanted a new trophy that could be shuttled to different venues so fans could pose for pictures with it, similar to the Stanley Cup. Kay noted that in 2015 the Stanley Cup was brought to Saratoga, and fans paid to have their pictures taken with it in a charity fundraiser.
Regarding the Triple Crown trophy, Kay said NYRA would “try to connect with certain not-for-profit organizations and help them in their fundraising.”
Kay said the plan is to rotate the Triple Crown trophy to the different racing organizations that host the three races. NYRA will have the trophy until sometime in September before transferring it to Churchill Downs.
Kay said that next spring the plan is to have the trophy on display at Churchill Downs during Derby week, Pimlico during Preakness week, and Belmont Park during Belmont week. Kay said the three companies that host the Triple Crown events, including Churchill Downs Inc. and The Stronach Group, split the cost of the trophy, but he would not reveal its price.
– David Grening
Six-figure guarantees
NYRA will offer a number of guaranteed pools and a pair of two-day daily-double wagers Friday and Saturday.
The Friday card, which includes five stakes, begins at 12:50 p.m. Eastern. There will be a pick four beginning on race 8 that comprises the Grade 2 True North, Grade 2 New York Stakes, Grade 2 Belmont Gold Cup, and a maiden race on turf. A minimum pool of $500,000 is assured.
The two-day wagers link the New York Stakes and Saturday’s Metropolitan Handicap, and the Belmont Gold Cup and the Belmont Stakes. The New York/Met Mile double pool is guaranteed at $100,000, and the Gold Cup/Belmont double will have a minimum pool of $300,000.
The 13-race Belmont Stakes card starts at 11:35 a.m., and the pick five beginning with race 1 will have a pool of at least $500,000. The sequence starts with a New York-bred optional claimer, followed by the Easy Goer, Grade 1 Ogden Phipps, Grade 1 Acorn, and Grade 2 Brooklyn.
A $500,000-guaranteed pick six starts on race 6 and comprises the Grade 2 Jaipur, Grade 2 Woody Stephens, Grade 1 Just a Game, Grade 1 Met Mile, Manhattan, and Grade 1 Belmont Stakes.
The largest guaranteed pool of the weekend is the $1.5 million pick four that begins on race 8, the Just a Game.
– Jim Dunleavy