Travers next for Belmont champ
Borrowing a line from the Frank Sinatra recording played during the post parade, Tiz the Law stood “A-number one, king of the hill, top of the list” in the 152nd Belmont Stakes.
Paraphrasing another line from “New York, New York,” having done it there, the only horse with a chance to win the 2020 Triple Crown looked capable Saturday of doing it anywhere.
To New Yorkers like Jack Knowlton, Tiz the Law’s majority owner, and Barclay Tagg, the colt’s 82-year-old trainer, winning the Belmont Stakes is a monumental achievement. In their case, they completed a personal Triple Crown with Tiz the Law, who now shoots for some of the same targets they won in 2003 with another New York-bred horse, Funny Cide.
No sooner than Tiz the Law cooled down after his third Grade 1 victory was it announced that the Constitution colt would adhere to a planned schedule. Next up is the $1 million Runhappy Travers Aug. 8 at Saratoga Race Course, the upstate New York track near Knowlton’s home.
“I’ve never won the Travers, and I want to win it,” Tagg said. “It’s very important to me.”
Then come the Kentucky Derby Sept. 5, the Preakness Oct. 3 and the Breeders Cup Classic Nov 7. Including the Belmont and Travers, Tiz the Law could become the first horse to win all five Grade 1 races in the same year. American Pharoah won the Triple Crown and the Classic in 2015, finishing second to Keen Ice in the Travers.
Tiz the Law, Tagg said, will tell him what he needs to know.
“You have to pay attention to your horse. He tells you whether it’s too much or too little,” Tagg said. “He tells you all that stuff if you pay attention to it. You have to show up every day. You have to see if he eats every day and if he eats every night.
“A lot of guys have horses all over the place, but we don’t. So, we have to make everything work,” he said.
Longtime Tagg assistant trainer Robin Smullen said Tiz the Law “came out of the race great. He ate up and then he came out and grazed for an hour. His legs are good, his attitude and energy are good.”
Tiz the Law entered finely tuned for his first start since winning the Grade 1 Florida Derby March 28, working five furlongs in 1:00.53 June 8 and an easy half-mile in 50.42 seconds June 14
at Belmont. Here, Tagg learned from his Belmont experience, Funny Cide zipping five furlongs in 57.82 seconds before placing third to Empire Maker over a sloppy track.
“Barclay is good at getting them to the right spot at the right time,” said Smullen, also Tiz the Law’s exercise rider. “We tightened the screws (on Tiz the Law), but in the last work we go in 50. And everybody asks, did you want to go that slow? Yeah, we did. That was on purpose. He’s just good at it.
“Our work two weeks out is usually our serious work and the last work before the race is the easiest work, if you have the horse that can do it,” she said. “With Funny Cide, you couldn’t. His work before the Belmont he went in 57, but this horse is easy to ride 90 percent of the time.”
Jockey Manny Franco took it from there on race day, overcoming an outside post (8) in a 10-horse field with a stalking trip from the chute used for nine-furlong dirt races at Belmont (because of the coronavirus pandemic, the race was pushed back two weeks on the calendar and shortened from the traditional mile and a half).
On cue, Tiz the Law moved up from third near the quarter pole and widened his lead in the stretch under intermittent right-handed pressure. Franco crossed the wire with a slight fist pump and yelling after his first Triple Crown race victory and the first by a New York-bred in 138 years. Tagg’s planning was so precise, his aide said, that the finish was choreographed.
“Barclay told him not to be jumping around on the horse. Sometimes they shift their weight [in the saddle] and it’s bad,” Smullen said. “So Barclay said to Manny, if you’re winning, don’t do that. Just don’t. That’s the stuff that nobody thinks about, but he does. It might be the difference between making the next race or not making it.”
• Trainer Todd Pletcher said Belmont runner-up Dr Post came back well and may be pointed to the Grade
1 million Haskell July 18 at Monmouth Park or the Travers Aug. 8. The Haskell is nine furlongs and the Travers, like the Kentucky Derby, at the classic American distance of a mile and a quarter.
“Both of those races are in play. It just depends on how he bounces out of the race,” Pletcher said Sunday. “We were always confident that a route of ground will not be an issue for him. He finished up well. It was a very encouraging effort.”
Dr Post broke his maiden the day after Tiz the Law, a Grade 1 winner at
2, won the Florida Derby. The Quality Road colt entered the Belmont off an April 25 stakes victory at Gulfstream Park.
“That’s a lot of progress to make in a short period of time. Hopefully, he keeps improving,” Pletcher said.
• Trainer Linda Rice has numerous options for Max Player, third in the Belmont after a four-month rest. Although the Kentucky Derby was not mentioned in a New York Racing Association release, the list includes the two biggest races for 3-year-olds at Saratoga, Rice’s summer base, led by the Travers and the Grade 2 Jim Dandy Sept. 5.
“We’ll keep all the options open for now and sort it out when we get him back to the track in a week to 10 days,” Rice said.
• Elsewhere, Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott posted his 5,000th career victory when Moon Over Miami took a nine-furlong turf allowance on Saturday at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky.
Mott became only the seventh North American trainer to reach 5,000 wins. The list includes his former Hall of Fame mentor, Jack Van Berg, and fellow Hall of Famers Jerry Hollendorfer, King Leatherbury and Steve Asmussen.
Mott watched the race on his phone from Belmont Park, where he saddled Modernist to a seventh-place finish in the Belmont Stakes. “I’ve spent a lot of time in Kentucky, so it was good to win it there,” Mott said.
A former Oaklawn training champion, the 66-year-old Mott scored important stakes victories in Arkansas with Magnum Moon in the 2018 Arkansas Derby and Cigar in the 1995 Oaklawn Handicap. His only Kentucky Derby victory, with Country House last year, was overshadowed by the on-track disqualification of first-place finisher Maximum Security. Mott trained 2010 Belmont Stakes winner Drosselmeyer, who also took the 2011 Breeders’ Cup Classic.