Sports

Lukas is not caught up in post draw hype at Belmont Stakes

Does post position in a 14-horse field going 1 1/2 miles really matter? Not to Hall-of-Fame legend D. Wayne Lukas, who will saddle Preakness winner Oxbow and live longshot Will Take Charge in Saturday’s Belmont Stakes.

“I think we overanalyze it a lot,” Lukas said at yesterday’s post-position draw. “It’s nice for the press to have something to write about, but really, at a mile-and-a-half and that long run and the sweeping turns, I’m more concerned about who is around me and what they are going to do than what gate we got.”

Other trainers, however, thought their post positions could be significant.

Todd Pletcher — after Unlimited Budget, the filly who performs much better in her workouts when she is outside her workmate, drew post 13 — said, “We were kind of hoping for Unlimited Budget to draw towards the outside.”

Tom Albertrani, whose Freedom Child is coming off a gate-to-wire romp in the Peter Pan, said, “We were hoping to get a little farther toward the middle, but we dealt with post 1 in the Peter Pan, so we’ll just deal with post 2 in the Belmont. I don’t know if he wants to be behind horses [so] he’ll probably want to find himself clear into the first turn.”

We could see a speed duel develop in the early going because after Frac Daddy drew post 1, Ken McPeek said, “We sending him from the inside. Absolutely. He needs to be near the front.”

The trainer who sounded most disappointed was Dallas Stewart, whose Golden Soul, the Derby runner-up, drew the far outside post 14.

“Hopefully, he’ll be able to save some ground, somehow, some way, and we’ll see what happens,” Stewart said. “It’s a bit of a challenge from post 14, but he’s the type of horse that’s met a lot of challenges.”