MORNING WORKOUT: Kentucky Derby winner Orb, the Belmont Stakes favorite at 3-1, drew the fifth post in Saturday’s race. (AP)
MORNING WORKOUT: Kentucky Derby winner Orb, the Belmont Stakes favorite at 3-1, drew the fifth post in Saturday’s race. (AP)
After winning the Kentucky Derby as the 5-1 favorite and finishing fourth in the Preakness at 3-5, Orb will be favored again — he’s 3-1 on the morning line — in the third jewel of the Triple Crown, Saturday’s 145th Belmont Stakes.
Just as trainer Shug McGaughey’s Easy Goer avenged himself with an eight-length romp over arch-rival Sunday Silence in the 1989 Belmont after finishing second as the odds-on choice in the Derby and Preakness, so too might Orb find redemption now that he’s back in his home stall, in his home barn, running over his home track.
“He has the opportunity to redeem himself, but he doesn’t have to,” McGaughey said. “He won the race [the Derby] we set out to win. But this is where we always wanted to run, and I was looking for a reason to run. His work the other day was as good as it possibly could be.
“He’s a talented horse. I think he’s going to prove it Saturday, and keep proving it down the line.”
No one is handing Orb the trophy yet, however, as 13 other 3-year-olds were entered in the 1 1/2-mile “Test of the Champion,” including Preakness winner Oxbow, when post positions were drawn yesterday. The 14-horse field ties it, with 1875 and 1996, for the second-largest in Belmont history; a record 15 ran in 1983.
Besides the $1 million purse, one big reason to take on Orb is the dismal record of the Belmont chalk over the past 20 years. As many favorites have failed to finish the race — Prairie Bayou, Cavonnier and Big Brown — as have won it during that span — Thunder Gulch, Point Given and Afleet Alex. We’ve seen payoffs of $28, $29.80, $39.60, $51.50, $61.50, $74, $79 and $142.50. Five of the last seven favorites finished sixth or worse.
And of the last 20 winners, only four — Tabasco Cat, Thunder Gulch, Point Given and Afleet Alex — won the Derby or Preakness!
In short, strange things can and do happen going once around “Big Sandy” — especially over an off-track, a good possibility given rain in the forecast for Saturday. Some Belmont winners you still can’t figure. Remember Sarava, Da’ Tara and Ruler On Ice, a combined 1-for-32 following their upset victories? Which is why you can’t throw anyone out, even though half of the field finished fifth or worse in their last start, beaten at least 13 lengths.
It’s also why nobody is laughing out loud at Mike Repole, the first owner since Hal Price McGrath in 1875 (the same year he won the first Kentucky Derby with Aristides) to run three Belmont horses in a single year: Overanalyze, Midnight Taboo and the filly Unlimited Budget. All three are trained by Todd Pletcher, whose five starters is also a record.
“I’ve been coming to Aqueduct and Belmont for 30 years, ever since I was 14, and the Belmont is the number one race I want to win,” Repole said. “I’ve never made it a secret.”
Unlimited Budget will be the 23rd filly to run in the Belmont, and she would be just the fourth filly to win it. Her jockey, Rosie Napravnik, is the first female rider to have a mount in all three Triple Crown races — she rode Mylute to finish fifth in the Derby and third in the Preakness — and she could join Julie Krone, who won the Belmont in 1993 on Colonial Affair, as the only female jockey to win a Triple Crown race.
Midnight Taboo, who has never run in a stakes race, is one of three horses in the field who did not start in the Derby or Preakness. The others are Freedom Child, coming off a 13-length runaway in the Peter Pan, run over a sloppy track at Belmont; and Incognito, fifth in the Peter Pan.