Audible pulled out of Belmont Stakes

There’s an intriguing story brewing in the run-up to the June 9 Belmont Stakes, one that could affect the way some fans view Justify’s bid to become the 13th Triple Crown winner.

Audible, the horse expected to be Justify’s chief competition in the 1{-mile endurance test, will not run, trainer Todd Pletcher said Friday morning.

“We have decided to freshen Audible up for a summer campaign,” Pletcher told HorseRacingNation.com. “I don’t feel like he’s as well as he was leading up to the Derby. I just don’t feel like he is where he needs to be to compete in the Belmont. We’ll freshen him up for the Jim Dandy or the Haskell.”

There’s a catch: Audible is owned by the same group — WinStar Farm, the China Horse Club, Starlight Racing and Head of Plains Partners — that owns Justify. And skeptics will surely argue that the owners are shelving Audible to give Justify an easier path to the Triple Crown and its associated riches.

WinStar president and CEO Elliott Walden said Thursday that Audible would be “big competition” for Justify if he ran, though the Kentucky Derby and Preakness champion would still be favored.

Less than 24 hours later, Audible was out of the race.

This dilemma is nothing new in thoroughbred racing, where owners and trainers routinely place multiple horses in the same race but also avoid matching their horses at inopportune times.

They want to win big races and purses, sure, but they also want to maximize the value of horses that generally run for no more than three years. That leads to inevitable collisions between competitive and profit-driven mentalities.