Maddux Sports Blog

(For those of you not into horse racing, two things – this will be the last article for a couple of months on the topic, and what the heck is wrong with you?)

First, let me congratulate Summer Bird. That was one heck of a race for a horse that was quietly coming into his own. This is one crazy Triple Crown season – the Derby winner was 51-1, and the Belmont winner was 44/1 in the Derby. Not a great time to be a handicapper, but a great year to be a fan. I’m pretty thrilled with both of the Birds – when I went to the Derby for the first time in 1996, Grindstone was the winner, his son Birdstone won the Belmont in 2004, and now two grandsons are champions. That’s the kind of thing that makes a sentimentalist like me happy.

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This is a bittersweet day in my mind. It’s a Triple Crown race, and I love those – that’s the sweet part. The bitterness comes from the fact that the Triple Crown is over for another year at about 6:30 tonight. That means that racing fades back into obscurity, and many of the great three year olds that I have grown to know and, for the most part, really like won’t be heard of much anymore. It happens every year, but I still never get used to this feeling. Before I get all sad and start crying, though, let’s take a look at how I see this race breaking down:

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The Belmont Stakes got a lot less interesting from the public perspective on Friday with the news that Rachel Alexandra will not be running in the race. Though I was beginning to hold out hope because the decision was taking longer than expected, this is pretty much exactly what I was expecting since about 12 seconds before the Belmont ended. Though the filly ran one heck of a race and deserves all of the credit in the world for what she accomplished, she was losing ground to the Derby champion, Mine That Bird, awfully quickly, and it was just a matter of moments before she would have been caught and passed. The Belmont is significantly longer than the Preakness (5/16 of a mile), and is further than any horse in the race is ever likely to be asked to run again in their lives. She clearly didn’t like the track at Pimlico on Preakness day, but the fact is that there are more reasons to believe that she could have been beaten in the Belmont than there were to think that she could have won the race. That’s not to say that she couldn’t win – she certainly could – just that there was a much greater chance that she could lose the Belmont than there was that she would lose the Preakness.

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I am counting the seconds until post time for the Belmont. It’s not hard, because they are passing so slowly. I have been waiting for a Triple Crown for most of my life, and I believe that the wait could and should be coming to an end. I’ve felt that several times before, and I have had my heart broken by each impressive horse – Alysheba, Silver Charm, Real Quiet, Funny Cide, and Smarty Jones more than the others. Something seems different this year, though – Big Brown is more of a freak than past horses in this situation, and the field contains fewer landmines (I want to be clear that I am not nearly as negative about this crop of three year olds as most people, but I just don’t think that there is a horse of Big Brown’s class) than recent years.

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It’s Saturday night and you should be out doing something more interesting than reading what I have to say, but I will hit three quick topics that caught my eye today:

1. A somewhat dull Triple Crown trail just got a whole lot more interesting. It looked like we were living in a one freak world – Big Brown. A second one emerged today. Casino Drive had only run once in his life before today, and it was in Japan. He won by a mile, though. More significantly, he has captured the attention of racing fans because he has shipped over here specifically for the Belmont, and because he is (at least) a half brother to Jazil and Rags to Riches (the last two Belmont winners). To tune up for that race which is a month off, the horse ran in the Peter Pan Stakes at Belmont against a reasonably decent crowd. It was a massacre. I could describe it further, but you had better see this one for yourself:

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