Baffert remains the one to beat
Look for Thousand Words to have edge over Authentic
If 2020 were normal, the Triple Crown would have been more than17 weeks ago. The Belmont Stakes would have been run on June 6, 119 days ago.
But, as we all know, this has been anything but a typical year. The Triple Crown, the marquee event for horse racing, has been scrambled this year because of coronavirus.
The Belmont Stakes batted leadoff and the distance was shrunk from the traditional 11⁄ miles to 11⁄ 8. The Kentucky
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Derby was run on the first Saturday in September as opposed to the first Saturday in May and here we are, closing it out with the Preakness on the first Saturday in October.
Who would have thought the Preakness would be sandwiched in while the baseball playoffs were going on? And the NBA Finals. Oh, and don’t forget college and pro football.
But, here we are, just a month from the Breeders’ Cup and the Preakness is being held at an empty Pimlico in Baltimore.
This is the first year since 2006 that I will not have covered at least one leg of the Triple Crown (an illness kept me away from the 2017 Derby and Preakness, but I made the Belmont). For this year’s Belmont, I chose to cover it while watching it with the Sackatoga Stable crew in Saratoga while Tiz the Law romped home. For the Derby, I decided to stay away from Louisville because of COVID concerns.
And, after Tiz the Law lost the Derby, the Preakness air just went out of the balloon.
They will still run the race and 11 horses are showing up at Pimlico on Saturday. If Tiz the Law
was going for the Triple Crown in the Preakness, I would be in Baltimore. But he is not, so I am not.
But I will be watching. I’m not sure how many others will. The Preakness will be run while Texas A&M and Alabama are playing football and that game is televised. The Triple Crown has never had to go up against college football before (the Breeders’ Cup has) and I’m not sure Bob Baffert and his Derby winner Authentic are going to be able to pry people away from Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide.
OK, onto the Preakness. This is the sixth time Baffert will be bringing a Kentucky Derby winner to the Preakness. The first five times, he won. Authentic is the 9-5 morning-line favorite to give the Hall of Fame trainer his Preakness half-dozen. Authentic ran a huge race in the Kentucky Derby, going to the lead and not allowing anyone, especially Tiz the Law, to get past him in the stretch.
The question now is does Authentic repeat that performance? It has been a month since the Derby. Does the horse regress off the that effort or is he just getting warmed up? Authentic has won four of five this year, none of them more impressively than the Derby.
Without question, he is the horse to beat. And that is what I will try to do.
I could give you a thousand words on who I think is going to beat Authentic but I will use just two. Thousand Words. That is the other Baffert horse in here and you may remember him as the horse that flipped in the paddock on Derby day and fell down. That was an automatic scratch. He gets another chance here. And makes the most of it.
Baffert expects a big effort from Thousand Words. He said this week he expects him to run a big race. Bigger than Au
thentic? I am thinking yes.
Thousand Words and jockey Florent Geroux will sit off the early speed of Authentic (and he could be joined by the talented Art Collector and maybe the filly Swiss Skydiver and New York-bred Ny Traffic). When the real running starts, I am looking for Thousand Words, who will be wearing blinkers, to sweep right on by all of them and win.
Authentic holds on for second and Swiss Skydiver
(she has talent, lots of it), Art Collector and maybe Max Player fight it out to fill out the exotics. If you want to get really crazy, throw the local horse, Bill Lawrence’s Liveyourbeastlife, who may make a late move, into the superfecta.
The picks: 1. Thousand Words. 2. Authentic. 3. Swiss Skydiver. 4. Art Collector.