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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- Well, the seemingly inevitable has finally been confirmed – point guard phenom John Wall will spend his one year in college playing basketball at Kentucky. He was a virtual lock to go to Memphis before John Calipari left for Kentucky. Since then he flirted strongly with Duke, and he even reportedly gave a soft verbal commitment to Miami of all places, but he has landed in the place that totally makes sense for him. The dribble-drive offense is tailor made for a guy like Wall just as it was for Derrick Rose. In fact, Wall is frequently compared to Rose, though he is said to be even faster and more athletic. That’s scary for opposing teams to hear.

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It’s been several hours since the race ended, so my thoughts have had time to percolate. Here’s what I’m thinking:

I owe it to Rachel Alexandra to say that I was impressed. She didn’t like the track, but she still managed to get to the lead surprisingly easily and hold it right to the end. It wasn’t the race that her fans was hoping she had, but at least she came through for the win. A filly hadn’t done that since 1924, so she deserves a world of credit.

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The more I look at this race, the more confused I get. It is far from a clear cut race – I could make a case for as many as nine horses of the 13 to win it (I’d leave out Luv Gov, Flying Private, Tone It Down and Take The Points, though of those the last is by far the most compelling). Let’s take a good look at the field, and then I’ll construct a superfecta ticket for kicks.

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I am getting ready to head to the airport and leave Louisville, and I’m still not sure what I saw yesterday. Our seats were at the 1/8 pole yesterday. As the horses got to us, Pioneerof The Nile, my choice, was in the lead and looking good. I was counting my winnings. But then I saw the flash moving up the rail. I had no idea who it was, but I knew the horse was moving fast. Very fast. I just didn’t think they would be able to get through the tiny hole that was barely there. If I’d known that it was Calvin Borel skimming the rail then I wouldn’t have been so confident in my horse. The guy is a machine, and he piloted the most unlikely possible Derby winner.

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