CO-‘BALT’: Jockeys Mario Gutierrez and Mike Smith, above finishing 1-2 on I’ll Have Another and Bodemeister in the Kentucky Derby, get a rematch today in Baltimore. (Jason Szenes)
BALTIMORE — Horse races seldom boil down to jockey races, but the Preakness at Pimlico this afternoon might be decided in an epic encounter between a superb, wily old veteran rider and a young no-name neophyte fresh out of Mexico.
The old timer is Mike Smith, who at 47 has seen it all and done it all, winning more than 5,000 races in a spangled career that got him elected to the Hall of Fame. He will ride the likely favorite, Bodemeister, after finishing second on him in the Kentucky Derby.
The upstart looking to knock him off the pedestal — again — is 25-year-old Mario Gutierrez, a native of Veracruz, whom no one had ever heard of until he came to the Derby two weeks ago, promptly won it on 15-1 shot I’ll Have Another and now is the hottest marquee name in the country.
Many experts — and the betting line — suggest these two horses have the Preakness to themselves. How they are ridden may determine the outcome.
Bodemeister is a free-running speed burner who will waltz off with the race if he is permitted to cut his own moderate fractions up front. That’s what Smith will attempt to do — take him in hand, settle him into a comfort zone and flash his heels at the rest of the field.
And that poses a huge dilemma for the novice Gutierrez, who likely will be sitting just behind him.
Jerry Bailey, the retired jockey ace of aces, put it this way yesterday: “Mario is going to have to decide when to go after Bode, how hard to go after him, but not so hard that he will get him beat and kill both of them. It’s not an easy job, but at some point in the race Mario will have to go from passenger to pilot.”
Bailey said flat out that Gutierrez is going to decide Bodemeister’s fate.
“All eyes are going to be on Mario,” he said. “We won’t know whether his lack of experience will be a deterrent or not until the race unfolds. He has been flying under the radar, but now that he has won the Derby, everyone’s looking at him. There’s a lot of pressure on him now.
“Every great jockey was anonymous at some point, but there comes a defining moment when they step up big in the spotlight. This might be Mario’s moment. We’ll see. But one thing’s for sure — a lot more eyes will be watching him in the starting gate at Pimlico than they were at Churchill Downs.”
In other words, Gutierrez is going to have target written all over him. But Bailey likes what he has seen: “In the Derby, Mario let his horse settle, He didn’t chase after Bodemeister in the fast going. Very cool ride.”
Asked what horse he would like to be riding in this Preakness, Bailey didn’t hesitate.
“The Derby winner,” he said. “With him, you have more options. If I was riding him, I’d trust my judgment to do what’s right through the course of the race, to force the pace whenever I wanted. Mario is going to have options that Mike Smith does not.”
Bob Baffert, who trains Bodemeister, and Doug O’Neill, who trains I’ll Have Another, are as much in limbo as everyone else on the Preakness strategy. Baffert wants to steal it, but knows the others won’t go for that. O’Neill knows his horse will have to press Bodemeister, but how hard?
“I’ll leave it to Mario,” O’Neill said yesterday.
Baffert, philosophically, said, “I don’t have any control. All I can do is get them ready, lead them over and put the saddle on them. The horse has to do the rest and the jockey has to keep him out of trouble.
“That’s Mike Smith’s job — keep Bode out of trouble and ride the race he thinks is right for him. It’s a lot of pressure. You can’t change Bode’s running style. He’s a brilliant horse with a lot of fight.
“Hopefully, he won’t go too fast. I hope Mike can slow him down. He doesn’t need to go the first quarter in 22 seconds like he did in the Derby. I think Mike learned a lot about the horse in the Derby. The pace is going to be the whole key here. If Bode runs his race, he will be effective. “
Baffert said much will depend on how the horses break from the gate.
“If they feel like running, they run, if they don’t, they don’t,” he said. “I brought Pioneer of the Nile to the Preakness in 2009. I thought he was going to run huge, but he didn’t run a jump.”
Baffert makes no secret of his admiration for I’ll Have Another: “He’s a very good horse. He’s going to be very hard to beat.”
In the end, it may be up to the jockeys. Will it be the old pro or the new kid on the block? Or, horseplayers forbid, could it be someone not even on the radar?