NEW DIGS: Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner I’ll Have Another checks out his new home for the next three weeks as he arrives at Belmont Park yesterday, and will attempt to become the first Triple Crown-winner since Affirmed in 1978 when he takes the track for the Belmont Stakes on June 9. (AP)
BALTIMORE — The late Woody Stephens used to tease Californians shipping horses into New York for the Belmont Stakes with the warning, “When you cross the Hudson, those buildings get awful big.”
He knew what he was talking about. He won five straight Belmont Stakes, a record that may never be broken.
His hardboot wisdom is well taken today in the euphoria billowing around I’ll Have Another’s breathtaking finish to snatch victory in the last few strides in the Preakness Stakes Saturday and set himself up for a run at the Belmont and the Triple Crown.
I’ll Have Another appears to have the Crown at his mercy. In Bodemeister’s absence, he looks a furlong best of the competition, his superiority asserted in the Santa Anita Derby, confirmed in the Kentucky Derby and certified in the Preakness. Who or what can stop him in the Belmont?
To be precise, two furlongs. The final leg of the Triple is a killer. Horses that have withstood the rigors of the Derby’s mile and a quarter, and the Preakness’ mile and three sixteenths more often than not hit a brick wall when they are asked to go around Belmont’s huge, winding oval. Those last two furlongs wipe them out.
Look at just some of the star-spangled horses who, like I’ll Have Another, came to the Belmont brimming with hope and expectations, only to crash with a thud — Big Brown, Smarty Jones, Funny Cide, War Emblem, Charismatic, Real Quiet, Silver Charm, Sunday Silence, Pleasant Colony and the greatest unfulfilled horse of the 20th century, Spectacular Bid.
To carry it off, I’ll Have Another will need to do what none of these could do. It shows the magnitude of the task awaiting him in three weeks. Woody wasn’t kidding after all.
At the Preakness barn early yesterday, in the glow of their success, trainer Doug O’Neill and his team were still on Cloud Nine. O’Neill went to I’ll Have Another’s stall, reached in for the feed tub, and lofted it for photographers. Not an oat in it, a beautiful sign of no aftereffects from the race. The horse was nuzzling his groom, frisky as a kitten. He’s in great shape.
“The dream just keeps coming,” O’Neill chortled.
Barring the unforeseen, it’s hard to think of anyone who can beat I’ll Have Another at Belmont, but O’Neill seems to have gotten Woody’s message. “There are some really top horses waiting for us there so it won’t be easy,” he said. “But this is a special horse. If he stays injury-free and healthy, I think he’s got a big chance.”
Still, there is that problem of the mile-and-a-half. O’Neill is philosophical: “I think horses can either get it or they can’t. Charlie Whittingham (the late great Californian trainer) used to say that you can’t make a sprinter into a route horse and you can’t make a router into a sprinter. They are what they are.
“But I believe if I’ll Have Another maintains his current exercise he’ll get a mile-and-a-half. He’s got all kinds of distance breeding on the bottom side of his pedigree.”
Next to the distance, the biggest trap in the Belmont is jockey skill. D. Wayne Lukas, the training legend, likes to say more Belmonts are lost through jockey error than anything else. O’Neill knows it, too.
He has already mapped plans to get his jockey, Mario Gutierrez, who has never ridden in New York, some rides at Belmont leading up to the big race. “We know it’s a unique oval and everyone keeps talking about how jockeys confuse the five-eighths pole with the three-eighths pole,” O’Neill said. “But Mario has shown in the first two legs of the Triple Crown that he has unbelievable patience to the point where we need some heart medicine. He’s very tough on the old ticker.”
O’Neill thinks Gutierrez has a target on his back. “That’s for sure,” he said. “But he has a disposition where he won’t get into any fights within the race. If he sees some aggressive riding, he’ll do his best to stay clear.”
There is some backstretch talk that other jockeys tried to do a job on him in the first turn of the Preakness, to draft him wide. “They were race riding him,” O’Neill said. “But Mario stayed cool and handled it perfectly. He’s a very humble kid.”
All through the campaign, O’Neill has maintained a rare exuberant confidence in I’ll Have Another, his tremendous stride and his ability to cope with pressure. Their enthusiasm is very infectious. “We have a great crew,” O’Neill said.
Now they’re ready to take on New York. They’ve proved they can make it in Los Angeles, Louisville and Baltimore. But can they make it in ol’ New York?
That’s the most exciting challenge of the season.