BELMONT STAKES
Why sweeping isn’t easy
Track is tough and I’ll Have Another will face more rivals than any other Triple Crown winner,
ELMONT, N.Y. — I’ll Have Another is the 4-5 favorite in New York oddsmaker Eric Donovan’s tentative morning line to win Saturday’s Belmont Stakes, which would make him the 12th horse to sweep the Triple Crown and the first in 34 years.
Despite that short price, the numbers are definitely against I’ll Have Another adding the Belmont Stakes to his Kentucky Derby and Preakness victories.
Tim Capps, executive in residence in the University of Louisville’s equine business program, says two big things make it tougher to win the Triple Crown today: size of foal crops, and owners and trainers placing more emphasis on those races.
I’ll Have Another would come from the largest foal crop for a Triple Crown winner, with 32,187 registered Thoroughbreds born in North America three years ago. Affirmed, who in 1978 became the last Triple Crown winner, came from a foal crop of 28,271. Sunday Silence (second, 1989 Belmont) came out of the largest foal crop for a Triple Crown contender: 51,296.
Compare that with the 2,128 foals born the same year as Sir Barton, who in 1919 was the first to sweep the three races.
“That’s got to make some difference statistically to a horse’s odds of winning,” said Capps, a former turf journalist and an ex- ecutive with the Maryland tracks and breeders’ association.
Also, the focus on the Triple Crown races has greatly intensified in his lifetime, he said.
“Everybody today who has a 3-year-old they believe can lift a leg faster than another horse is thinking about the Derby early and trying to figure out a way to get there,” he said. “You didn’t see 20-horse fields with the Derby. Now it’s automatic . . . unless three of them drop dead the morning of the race.”
I’ll Have Another will have to beat more rivals than any Triple Crown winner — 39, if all 11 prospects are entered Wednesday for the Belmont. The competition for the 11 Triple Crown winners ranged from 14 opponents (Count Fleet in 1943) to 32 (War Admiral in 1937).
Eight faced six or fewer foes in the Belmont, and six had no more than four opponents.
I’ll Have Another also would join War Admiral as the only Triple Crown winners to have faced a full Derby field of 20.
Penny Chenery, owner of Secretariat and 1972 Derby and Belmont winner Riva Ridge, says the difference between recent years and the 1970s is “the reasons for which we breed horses.
“Back in the ’70s, we were still breeding horses to race them, and so much of the industry now is concentrated on sales,” she said. “And so you breed a precocious, good-looking, early speed horse who isn’t equipped to go a mile and a half or to run three hard races in five weeks.”
There’s also the issue of the Belmont being unlike anything else in American racing. It’s one of two dirt races conducted around two turns at Belmont Park, with its 1½-mile circumference. With a Triple Crown on the line, rookies and Hall of Famers alike have been undone by moving too soon or too late.
“More riders lose the Belmont than horses. Period,” four-time Belmont-winning trainer D. Wayne Lukas said.
Trainers can make mistakes too, Carl Nafzger says. His 1990 Derby winner Unbridled finished fourth in the Belmont in what Nafzger calls the “worst training job of my life.”
“What I learned is that these good horses ‘swell’ on these big races. They get better,” said Nafzger, who won the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Belmont that fall with Unbridled. “And I backed off with Unbridled.”
I’ll Have Another shot down one stat in becoming the first Derby winner from post 19.
“Thirty-four years of it not happening is a pretty strong statistic,” trainer Doug O’Neill said when asked about Triple Crown stats. “Just staying injury-free is such a huge statistic. What I’ll Have Another has done and the way he’s been able to maintain his physique, appetite and energy, that’s a huge hurdle.”