Tiz the Law loss silences Triple Crown hopes
At about quarter after seven on Saturday night, you could almost feel the air leave the Capital Region. From Schuylerville to Voorheesville and all points in between, there might have been a collective sigh from folks huddled in front of their television sets to watch the 146th running of the Kentucky Derby.
Tiz the Law, the area’s horse, was the colossal favorite and you betcha that people in every city, town and village in the 518 were going to yell and holler, stomp their feet and jump off their couches when the horse with the big white blaze down the center of his face blew away yet another group of 3-year-old colts. Of course, he was going to win the most famous horse race on American soil. Never a doubt.
Until there was.
Tiz the Law could not get by the Bob Baffert-trained Authentic. When the two horses got shoulder-to-shoulder, making it a two-horse race into the stretch, we were all waiting for the trademark Tiz the Law move. We saw it in the Florida Derby and the Belmont and, last month at the Travers. In those races, Tiz the Law became the Roadrunner, leaving any and all sputtering in his wake.
I talked to Barclay Tagg,
Tiz the Law’s trainer, for a few minutes on the phone just an hour after the Derby was done. Truth be told, he didn’t really want to talk to anyone. He was on the backstretch at Churchill Downs, was with his horse, watching him cool out after the tough 11/4-length loss. Told him I thought Tiz the Law was going to streak past Authentic when he got to him, just like he had in all his other races.
“I thought he was, too,” Tagg said.
And then a pause as he was taking a look over at Tiz the Law.
“My horse ran hard,” Tagg said. “It’s just hard to beat Baffert.”
The Triple Crown dream of Tiz the Law and Tagg and the crew from Sackatoga Stable ended with a vicious thud when Authentic crossed the finish line first. Here’s a slice of irony for you. Authentic’s Derby time of 2:00.61 was the seventh-fastest in the race’s history.
It was the hope that Tiz the
Law would conquer Kentucky and then go onto Baltimore and finish off the Triple Crown in the Preakness on Oct. 3. That won’t happen now. I’m not sure if Tiz the Law will go to Maryland, Tagg’s old stomping grounds, or not.
The trainer said if it’s up to him, Tiz the Law won’t go. He knows that the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Keeneland in November is a race Jack Knowlton, the head honcho at Sackatoga, wants to be at.
“I don’t see any reason to go to the Preakness,” Tagg said. “I don’t want to do both, but it’s not up to me. I don’t own the horse.”
Knowlton wants to continue on. When I talked to him on the phone Saturday night — right after he was getting off the yellow school bus when it was dropping the Sackatoga gang off at the hotel — he said Baltimore, to him, is a go.
“I’ve talked to Barclay and I’ll talk to him again,” Knowlton said. “I want to be there. If the horse is doing well, why not? It’s a classic race and you don’t get the chance to run in classic races every year.”
I was talking to Tagg and Knowlton while still in the press box at Saratoga, where the final Saturday of the 40-meet card had finished two hours earlier. Talk about weird. On the first Saturday of September, when the Woodward should have been the biggest race of the day anywhere around the country, the Kentucky Derby was being run.
This was just the second Derby I have not been in Kentucky to cover since 2006. Strange to have the Derby on the first Saturday in September. Stranger still to watch it in Saratoga on the last weekend of the summer meet. Coronavirus makes us long for a return to normal.
When they were playing “My Old Kentucky Home” as the horses came out of the tunnel, I was watching it on the big screen out on the Saratoga infield. There were 10 of us in the press box. And we all watched Tiz the Law come up just short.
It was quiet. Just like I can imagine it was quiet in households all over the Capital Region.