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Pity the folks at the New York Racing Association. Things were already bad enough: NYRA is going broke, OTB won’t pay the $15 million it owes, and the state is breaking its promise to fund NYRA until the VLT casino at Aqueduct is OK’d.
Now, with Kentucky Derby winner Super Saver finishing eighth in the Preakness, a crowd of 90,000+ won’t attend NYRA’s biggest day, the June 5 Belmont Stakes, to see a horse gunning for the Triple Crown — the fifth time in the last six years there’s been no Triple Crown bid.
On top of that, there will be no “rubber match.” Neither Super Saver nor Preakness winner Lookin At Lucky — both are getting a vacation — will run in the mile-and-a-half “Test of the Champion.” This is just the third time in 40 years that both the Derby and Preakness winners skipped the final jewel of the Triple Crown.
What the NYRA marketing guys are left with is what they call “a good betting race.” A dozen or so horses could be in the starting gate, with Ice Box, a fast-closing second in the Kentucky Derby, the likely favorite.
Ice Box is trained by Nick Zito, who’s won two Belmonts and finished second six times. Both of his winners were longshots: 36-1 Birdstone in 2004 and 38-1 Da’ Tara in 2008, foiling the Triple Crown bids of Smarty Jones and Big Brown, respectively.
This year, Zito also has the probable second choice, Fly Down. The Mineshaft colt exploded to win Belmont Park’s major prep for the Belmont, the Dwyer Stakes (formerly the Peter Pan) on May 8, by six lengths.
Other probable Belmont starters are Preakness runner-up First Dude, Dublin, Drosselmeyer, Game On Dude, Setsuko, Stately Victor, Stay Put, Uptowncharlybrown, Make Music for Me and New Madrid. Super Saver’s stablemate, the filly Devil May Care, who finished 10th in the Kentucky Derby, is a possibility.