Brennan: Did muddy conditions cost Triple Crown run?
BALTIMORE – The dream of a second consecutive Triple Crown in horse racing disappeared into the muddy slop at Pimlico Race Course Saturday evening.
Nyquist will not be the worthy successor to American Pharoah. Exaggerator, the earnest challenger who had lost to Nyquist the four previous times they had raced, the horse who had tried so gamely to track Nyquist down at the Kentucky Derby, finally caught him at the Preakness.
Everything is back to normal in horse racing. You may now return to your regularly-scheduled lives.
A dreary, rainy, chilly, miserable day led to joy for Exaggerator – and disappointment for almost everyone else. We were spoiled last year by American Pharoah’s majestic run to the first Triple Crown in 37 years.
Now we have been reminded just how difficult that quest was, and why it took nearly four decades to achieve it.
See you in another few decades, Triple Crown fans.
Perhaps it won’t be that long. We can only hope. In the meantime, quite a rivalry has developed between the two best 3-year-olds of the year: the talented Nyquist, who arrived at the Preakness undefeated and left with a third-place finish, and Exaggerator, who not only might have received a helpful assist from the weather, but also was the beneficiary of a good bit of local knowledge in the person of his jockey, veteran Kent Desormeaux.
This was the first time Nyquist ever had run on a sloppy, messy track, while Exaggerator had won in bad conditions at the Santa Anita Derby last month.
“I hope it’s not only because of the muddy track,” said trainer Keith Desormeaux, Kent’s older brother, who referred to the track conditions by the rail as “a quagmire” by Saturday evening.
“You can’t deny what’s happening here with these two huge races (in tough conditions),” Keith Desormeaux continued. “You have to think that the track means a lot to his performances, but his fast-track performances aren’t bad either. The horse has trained phenomenally. I’ve always felt we had an exceptional talent in Exaggerator.”
Then there was the exceptional home-field advantage of the Desormeaux brothers, who gained valuable experience early in their careers at Pimlico and other Maryland tracks.
Kent, who now has won three Preakness Stakes, knows the place inside and out.
“I had a dream trip today,” he said. “I was on the fence and they all stayed wide. These turns, you want to paint the fence. We did, they didn’t, and, not for nothing, knowledge is power.”
This gamesmanship and strategy is one of the delights of a Triple Crown race. Tragically, there was another story line to his day: In the first four races of the day, two horses died, one of an apparent heart attack after winning the first race, the other euthanized after breaking down in the fourth race.
After such tragedy, it’s natural to ask what happened next at Pimlico. The fifth race was run as scheduled, that’s what happened. And then the sixth, and the seventh, and so on, all the way to the 13th, the Preakness Stakes, the race that thousands in the muddy infield and tens of thousands more in tents and in the grandstands had come to bet on, and see.
The show went on, that’s what happened. That’s what always happens in horse racing. The sport moves right along, and us with it.
GALLERY: THE WEEK AT THE PREAKNESS