Travers to crown glamour champ
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — Belmont Stakes winner Creator skipped over the racetrack like a school kid, his gray coat glimmering as if he were beneath a spotlight. Preakness Stakes victor Exaggerator, a rangy colt with a commanding stride, quieted onlookers as he sauntered past like a gunslinger in a Hollywood western.
The 147th running of the Travers Stakes is upon us, and the search for a Big Horse among racing’s glamour division, the 3-yearolds, continued in this slice of horse heaven.
With no apologies to Creator’s trainer, Steve Asmussen, or Exaggerator’s boss, Keith Desormeaux, a dozen other challengers intend to show up in the Midsummer Derby today in the hope of showing horse lovers who is really the best in the land.
This is in striking contrast to a year ago, when the newly minted Triple Crown champion, American Pharoah, rolled into town like a lightning storm, electrifying this horse-crazy hamlet and transforming the usually pastoral morning training hours into a noisy amphitheater where greatness was on center stage.
The open field of contenders also has created a starkly confounded vibe from the previous week when Songbird, the immensely talented filly, ran her record to a perfect 10 for 10 with an effortless
Horse racing
seven-length victory in the Alabama Stakes.
Her owner, Rick Porter, has opted not to have Songbird try the boys in the Travers.
This Midsummer Derby feels more like the big one in Kentucky, where horse aficionados and horse lovers alike try to puzzle out who might be the best 3year-old in America. On the first Saturday of this past May, a colt named Nyquist looked like a worldbeater when he ran off with the Derby for his eighth consecutive victory.
Two weeks later at the Preakness, Exaggerator ended Nyquist’s Triple Crown campaign on a swampy racetrack. The two met up again a month ago at the Haskell Invitational on another sloppy racetrack on the Jersey Shore, with Exaggerator coming out on top and Nyquist staggering home in fourth, a result that sent the Derby champ back to his home in California and some much-needed rest.
So here we are in August asking a horseplayer’s most urgent question: “Who do you like?” It has been shouted in the grandstand at Saratoga Race Course and murmured in the far reaches of the training track, which is a short walk across Union Avenue but is really a trip back in time. It is tree-lined, tranquil and ready to conjure Diamond Jim Brady from its mists at any moment.
Why not Exaggerator, the morning-line favorite at 3 to 1? Well, he has shown that, on wet racetracks, he is as agile as a tadpole, winning four times; but he has just two wins on dry ones. Alas, today is predicted to be cloudless and sunny.
“His success is not dependent on a sloppy track,” Desormeaux said.
Likewise, Creator has enough holes in his résumé to drive a truck through, starting with the fact that he only has three victories in 11 starts. As impressive as his comefrom-behind Belmont victory was, Creator was awful in finishing sixth in the Jim Dandy here four weeks ago.
Still, a full field of 14 horses surrounded with uncertainties makes an afternoon at the racetrack not only more exhilarating but also potentially profitable. The stakes are high as well for the owners and the trainers.