After surprise victory in Preakness Stakes, Rombauer points toward potentially talent-rich Belmont Stakes
Michael McCarthy kept a gentle hold on Rombauer as they relaxed after a Sunday morning walk around the shedrow at Pimlico Race Course.
The new Preakness champion demonstrated none of the fire that had propelled him past Medina Spirit and Midnight Bourbon the previous evening. “I think we might have taken a little starch out of him last night,” McCarthy said.
The 50-year-old trainer, who’d just moved his Triple Crown record to a perfect 1-0, was equally subdued. He couldn’t yet say if the Preakness would go down as a life-changing achievement. On Saturday night, he’d celebrated with a plate of pasta in Little Italy and then gone to bed. Mostly, he wanted to get back to his wife and 10-year-old daughter in California.
“We’ll see,” he said of the impact on his barn, which began with one horse in 2014. “It’s a hard question to answer right now. … It’s great to see this all come together. The horse justified what I thought of him all along.”
Rombauer will ship from Pimlico to Belmont Park on
Monday morning. If he continues to recover well from Saturday’s run, McCarthy would like to try him in the June 5 Belmont Stakes. That decision will come after consultation with owner John Fradkin, who kept Rombauer out of the Kentucky Derby against McCarthy’s wishes.
“He’s leaning toward the Belmont as well,” McCarthy said Sunday.
The unimposing bay colt saved the racing world from an awkward three weeks when he blew past Medina Spirit in the stretch. If Medina Spirit had won the Preakness, he would have gone to New York with a theoretical chance to take the Triple
Crown for trainer Bob Baffert. But he would have done so under the cloud of a possible disqualification from his victory in the Kentucky Derby. We don’t know when the results from Medina Spirit’s splitsample blood test from Kentucky will come back or whether they’ll confirm his positive for the anti-inflammatory drug betamethasone. He could still be the Derby champion when the Belmont Stakes goes off on the first Saturday in June.