Special race gets winner it deserves
A filly winning the Preakness isn’t the big story; holding the race in October was. A special Preakness deserved a special winner, and Swiss Skydiver’s performance Saturday fit the necessary criteria for excellence.
The victories of Rachel Alexandra and Zenyatta are fresh enough in memory to acknowledge that a female horse can beat male rivals on occasion, however rare the opportunity. More often than not, the female horse is an outstanding physical specimen (Winning Colors in the 1988 Kentucky Derby) or the best of a middling group of males (Genuine Risk in the 1980 Derby).
Trainer Ken McPeek went against the grain. Unlike Rachel Alexandra, the first Preakness-winning filly in 85 years, Swiss Skydiver entered off a Kentucky Oaks defeat. But with the same fortitude that Shedares the devil held her off at Churchill Downs Sept. 4, Swiss Skydiver outfought the Kentucky Derby winner at Pimlico. A neck separated Swiss Skydiver from Authentic in what to these eyes was the most thrilling Preakness finish since Sunday Silence triumphed over Easy Goer in 1989.
Hall of Fame rider John Velazquez earned praise after the Derby for putting Authentic on the lead (from an outside post) and meeting the stretch challenge of favored Tiz the Law. Robby Albarado is equally deserving for his ride on Swiss Skydiver, who got the jump on Authentic leaving the half-mile pole when the latter’s stablemate, Thousand Words, an unexpected pacesetter, backed up.
A writer for Louisville-based website Horse Racing Nation considered that the key moment of the race. “Would Authentic have won if Swiss Skydiver never hit the front before the turn?” asks Reinier Macatangay. “That is possible. Regardless, Swiss Skydiver and Albarado deserve credit for not waiting and finding out.”
In the truest sense, the latest Triple Crown event in history was a fall classic. Only Secretariat toured the Pimlico surface faster, 1:53 in 1973, circling the field on the first turn. Swiss Skydiver, clocked in 1:53.28, restored any glitter that was lost when she finished second in the Oaks.
McPeek, now with a Preakness victory to go with that of Sarava in the 2002 Belmont Stakes, has done anything but keep Swiss Skydiver under bubble wrap, to borrow an expression of Bob Baffert’s. She is a stakes winner now in Florida, Arkansas, California, New York and Maryland. McPeek mentioned the Preakness after her Grade 1 victory in the Alabama at Saratoga. Oaks defeat or not, he stayed on that course when the retirement last week of champion Midnight Bayou made Sunday’s Grade 1 Spinster appealing.
“I should probably retire today,” McPeek said Sunday, “because I don’t think it can get higher than this. I really don’t. She’s beat so many odds.”
Keeneland, where 4-year-old filly Valiance won the Spinster, is host to the Breeders’ Cup on the first weekend in November. Swiss Skydiver has the option of running against males in the $7 million Classic or facing her peers in the Distaff.
“I like the mile and a quarter of the Classic, but the Distaff (nine furlongs) … is probably the wiser move,” McPeek said. “But the farther she goes the better. We can sit on it. We won’t make a rash decision.”
Jockey Tyler Gaffalione goes from winning the Preakness on War of Will to taking off the eventual winner. A winner of more than 5,200 races and two Oaklawn Park championships, Albarado turned the pick-up mount into his first Grade 1 winner since 2017 and his first stakes victory of 2020.
“The thing about it was that we took a negative and made it into a positive,” McPeek said. “We didn’t have a rider until Saturday night (Sept. 26). I called Robby right away and I said, ‘Here’s what it’s going to take for you to ride her. We’re going to offer the mount to Mike Smith (fourth in the Derby on since-retired Honor A.P.) and wait for his agent to call me back. If his agent says no then I’m going to present to the owner that you’re going to ride her. He said, ‘OK, let
me know, let me know.
“We waited for Mike Smith’s agent to return our offer, but once I got confirmation he couldn’t ride her, I called Robby and said, ‘You’re on.’ I said, ‘But here’s what we’re going to do. We’re flying up together; we’re going to get on her all week.’ I think it was fortuitous because he got on her every day and got to know her. He spent time with her and, every day, he got more confident in her. You need a rider with confidence because if she takes you there, she’ll win. We pulled it off.”
The Breeders’ Cup should decide the 3-year-old male champion, though Tiz the Law gets a nod for his body of work (Belmont Stakes victory included) in the first half of the season. The 3-year-old filly division probably was settled over the weekend with Swiss Skydiver’s Preakness victory and Shed arest he devil’ s third in the Spinster. (Hot Springs horseman Staton Flurry, co- owner of the Oaks winner, said She dares the devil is doubtful for the Distaff, in which trainer Brad Cox’ Monomoy Girl looms the favorite. Cox said after the Spinster that the Distaff looks doubtful for the Oaks winner.)
Rachel Alexandra parlayed her Preakness victory, followed by two others against males, into Horse of the Year. Remember, that was the year (2009) Zenyatta became the only female winner of the Breeders’ Cup Classic. McPeek considers his filly under discussion for Horse of the Year.
“I think you have to make a case for her. I mean, she’s run every month of the year except April, and she ran at the end of March and early May. You have to make a case for her. She’s entertained coast to coast, north, south, east, west,” he said. “She’s amazing. She’s not even tired today. She’s a throwback horse.”
And a worthy Preakness winner in a Triple Crown season unlike any other.