Horse racing needs to settle who’s best on racetrack

So the neat and tidy result for Saturday’s Preakness Stakes would have been for War of Will to fade in the stretch, finishing in the back of the pack as a “new shooter” won a race that lacked the two horses that could claim to have won the Kentucky Derby. That is not what happened.

War of Will’s Preakness victory, all things considered, was extraordinary. Even though he got a perfect trip, it was about as impressive as it could have been. Look at what happened with the other three returning Derby runners in the Preakness: None finished in the top five, running behind a couple of horses with post-time odds of 29-1 (Everfast) and 21-1 (Laughing Fox).

While it’s never easy for any horse to come back two weeks after a Kentucky Derby and win at Pimlico, this year’s Derby was especially difficult and draining. Trainer Mark Casse, however, never hesitated. He said the morning after the Derby that War of Will would be in the Preakness. It’s likely that he’ll be in the Belmont Stakes, too, and from what we witnessed in Baltimore, who can say he won’t be primed to win again?

In a bigger sense, War of Will’s outstanding Preakness was a statement. And it made this year’s Triple Crown picture even cloudier in that it confirmed any lingering suspicion from the Kentucky Derby that Casse’s horse would have had a good chance in the stretch were it not for the contact that led to Maximum Security’s disqualification. Opinions vary as to who and what was to blame for that, but it happened, and sadly we’ll never know how that muddy race at Churchill Downs would have played out otherwise.

Assuming Maximum Security and Country House do not return for the Belmont, the debate of who might be the best 3-year-old of this Triple Crown season this year is going to linger, bringing an empty, unsatisfied sense to horse racing’s biggest time of the year, complete with legal action and disputes over what a video shows.

Look, this needs to be settled on the racetrack.

Whether it is at Belmont or somewhere else, the sport must find a way to get these three horses on a track somewhere again together in the coming months at an agreeable distance and at a time when all three parties agree the horse can be primed to run his best.

We need some type of satisfying conclusion to all of this. We need to know who is the best. If for no other reason to get past this chapter and finally have answers to questions that simply became more numerous this weekend.