Winners and Losers from the 2016 Triple Crown Season
So that’s it, folks, another Triple Crown in the books, three races and three winners, the latest going to Creator in the Belmont Stakes.
The five-week theater that is the Triple Crown saw it flirt with the idea of Nyquist making a Triple Crown Daily Double by following in American Pharoah’s enormous footprints. Instead, Nyquist faltered in the Preakness, allowing Exaggerator his due.
Then with a chance to cement himself as Nyquist’s equal, Exaggerator fell to 11th in the Belmont Stakes, raising more questions as we near the summer campaigns.
At last we move ahead, but before that, we review the winners and losers from the 2016 Triple Crown.
Loser: Dallas Stewart
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Dallas Stewart, trainer of the ubiquitous long shot, had no such luck in the Triple Crown and the Belmont Stakes in particular.
He saddled two horses in the Belmont, Seeking the Soul and Forever d'Oro.
They finished 12th and 13th in the Belmont, respectively, far from good for this trainer of the sneaky-good horse.
Stewart can, however, look back at the Derby, where he had Mo Tom and Tom's Ready finish eighth and 12th, respectively. So there's that.
Winner: Lani
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Let’s give up to Lani, the Japanese handled colt who ran in all three legs of the Triple Crown, with his strongest showing in the Belmont Stakes finishing third.
He, along with Exaggerator, were the only two horses who ran in the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes.
Take a look at what Lani has done since March, about six weeks before the Derby.
He won the UAE Derby in Dubai. Then he flew to the United States—thousands of miles—and trained up to the Kentucky Derby.
No horse has ever won the Derby using the Dubai Detour, but he ran a game ninth in the Derby and a hard-charging fifth in the Preakness.
It would have been easy to hang up the tack for the remainder of the spring, but his handlers pointed him to the Belmont, where he finished stronger than the previous two.
What do we make of this horse and what will the fractious, temperamental son of Tapit accomplish this summer?
He seems like a Grade 2 or 3 winner in the making, maybe the Jim Dandy or West Virginia Derby this summer. Heck, the way he closed in the Belmont, maybe we’ll see him in the Travers at Saratoga.
Loser: Chad Brown
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For all of Chad Brown’s prowess with horses on the turf, he has yet to find his stride with three-year-olds on the dirt.
Brown saddled the promising Shagaf in the Derby, who didn’t even finish the race.
My Man Sam finished third in the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland to prep for the Derby. Nosing Cherry Wine at the wire punched My Man Sam’s Derby ticket.
Both horses should have stayed home.
Shagaf barely made it a mile.
Brown said after the race in a release received first hand:
"Shagaf was a huge disappointment. He got up there in the race, attending pretty hot pace, but I liked the fact that he was out of trouble. Then he just completely spit the bit. I'm not sure what exactly happened. We'll have to go back to the drawing board. He trained so well leading up to it, that's a surprise to me, a disappointment.
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My Man Sam didn’t fare much better, though he did finish.
Brown is a savant when it comes to training turf horses. He’s been able to exploit a market inefficiency and make a wonderful living running on grass. There’s money on the green, but it doesn’t have quite the cache as dirt racing does in America, thus it’s not as popular.
Fine for Brown, but he’s got a ways to go before he crushes it in the Triple Crown.
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Winner: The Preakness Winner
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Exaggerator finished a distant 11th in the Belmont Stakes, a race where the son of Curlin had a chance to even the scale against Nyquist for the leading three-year-old in the nation.
A win would have been three Grade 1s in four races and two Triple Crown races over Nyquist’s one (albeit the Kentucky Derby).
No dice for Exaggerator.
Jockey Kent Desormeaux said after the race in a press release received first hand:
"The horse that was keen to progress was not underneath me. I nursed him to the quarter pole and set him down, put him down for a mad drive and said, "Show me your stuff," and there was nothing there. By the time we got to the eighth pole he was stepping on his tongue and I said that's enough. I'm not going to be fifth, I'm not going to be seventh. Let's get him home and probably get him back to where he enjoys a mile and a quarter or not three weeks in a row.
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How can a winner of a Triple Crown race be a loser, right?
Exaggerator will come back strong, and maybe we’ll see him in Saratoga where he’ll cross paths in late August against the Derby winner.
Loser: The Maiden
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During the live blog, I went on a rant about Trojan Nation being in the Belmont Stakes and the Kentucky Derby.
Why?
He’s a maiden, meaning he’s never won a race.
He qualified for the Derby by finishing a surprising second in the Wood Memorial behind Outwork. Trojan Nation earned the points, so technically he earned his way in, no doubt about it. Golf clap.
But there needs to be another caveat to enter the Kentucky Derby field and the Triple Crown: The horse needs to win a race, at least prove s/he’s capable of hitting the wire—any wire—first.
He finished 16th in the Derby, which was sort of a miracle in and of itself. He passed Exaggerator to finish 10th in the Belmont Stakes after Exaggerator powered down.
Trojan Nation belongs in maiden-special-weight company, then allowance or low-level, ungraded stakes races until he proves himself.
Otherwise he’s just taking up space in the gate for a more talented, more capable colt.
Winner: Todd Pletcher's Training of Destin and Gray Horses Everywhere!
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Todd Pletcher, world-renowned super trainer, took the unorthodox approach with his colt, Destin.
Destin won the Tampa Bay Derby then took 56 days off before the Kentucky Derby, an unprecedented layoff heading into Kentucky. He ran sixth in that race in only his fourth career start.
He took five weeks off and ran a monster Belmont Stakes (my pick to win). He lost by a head-bob to another gray colt named Creator.
And let’s give it up for Bobby Flay and the rich getting richer! He bought a share in Creator. When, Mr. Flay, a week ago? Two weeks ago?
“Actually, Bob [Costas], it was Wednesday,” Flay said during the NBC broadcast. “I want to thank WinStar Farm to let me in on this amazing moment. Creator created a miracle, and now we’re paying for it with rain, but, man, it was worth it.”
And Lani getting up for third made for an all-gray trifecta, which paid $1,375.50 for two dollars, by the way.
Loser: Preakness Nyquist
7 of 8The major loser of the Tale of Two Nyquists was his ride in the Preakness. The real loser is the hubris surrounding Nyquist.
Yes, he was unequivocally the best horse in the Preakness field. He proved that in Kentucky. That 8-of-8 record validated his talent.
Then along came extenuating circumstances, the everybody-has-a-plan-until-you-get-punched-in-the-mouth scenario.
The Preakness had no shortage of speed up front.
It rained all day before the Preakness, making the track sloppy.
Exaggerator, Nyquist’s chief rival, loves the mud.
Exaggerator’s jockey, Desormeaux, cut his teeth in Maryland and can ride around ride Pimlico with a blindfold and noise-cancelling headphones with his hands tied behind his back aboard a fractious, unbroken stallion bareback.
Yet…Team Nyquist stuck to their playbook of “taking it to them"; and it got taken to them.
It was clear from the opening of the gate that Nyquist’s marching orders were to go to the lead no matter what. Those were the orders of a few other horses too, and when the first quarter-mile fraction went up in 22 and change, the race was over, and so too was the Triple Crown bid.
Nyquist dug in gamely down the lane, but he was no match for a speed-rationing Exaggerator. Cherry Wine, a new shooter who missed the Derby field by a nose, even passed Nyquist.
O’Neill had the courage to say his plan—a failed one—was his idea all along.
He said in Alicia Wincze Hughes’ Herald-Leader story:
"You know, they’re not machines and being 8-for-8 we kept thinking this horse was never going to lose. But they all lose one time or another. They went pretty good early on but I just wanted to see a good, clean trip and trouble-free. I think (jockey) Mario (Gutierrez) did a wonderful job. Him going fast early was really my idea thinking, "He’s the best horse, take it to them."
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O’Neill undoubtedly had the best horse, but quarterbacks call audibles for a reason. O’Neill should have read the defense better and made a different, possibly winning call.
Instead, Nyquist lost the Preakness and has started to see his grip on Champion Three-Year-Old loosen before the Fourth of July.
Winner: Kentucky Derby Nyquist
8 of 8In the Tale of Two Nyquists, there’s a major winner and a major loser.
Being the Kentucky Derby favorite has its perks, but along with it comes the painful expectation that your horse is supposed to win a race with 20 horses going 10 furlongs, a distance half of them will never see again and a field size none will see again.
Nyquist was the Derby favorite and ran like one. Jockey Mario Gutierrez settled Nyquist in a perfect spot through the first portions of the race and turned him loose when it was game time.
This was the Nyquist everyone came to see.
"You just felt there was no way you could be nervous because you just felt like you were going in the gym with Kobe Bryant," trainer Doug O'Neill said in an ESPN.com wire story. "You just knew he was going to figure out a way to pull it out at the end, and he did. Mario gets a lot of credit too. What a ride, what a ride."
In a relatively week crop of three-year-olds, it appeared Nyquist was set up not only to win the Kentucky Derby, but the Triple Crown.
All he had to do was win the Preakness against a colt he had previously beaten four times.
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