Creator upsets heavily favored Exaggerator to win the Belmont Stakes

Hall of Fame jockey Kent Desormeaux appeared to have Exaggerator perfectly positioned as he sat mid-pack in a field of 13 in the 148th Belmont Stakes on Saturday. But when he asked for the tremendous late kick that allowed his mount to rally for second in the Kentucky Derby and to win the Preakness Stakes, the colt merely spun his wheels.

Creator, under a brilliant ride from precocious Irad Ortiz Jr., all but flew past as he split horses and overtook Destin by a nose in the final stride of the mile-and-a-half marathon at Belmont Park. The outcome provided trainer Steve Asmussen with a signature victory in a year that will include his induction into the National Museum of Racing’s Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., in August.

“It will look good on the plaque,” said Asmussen, 50, who won his first Belmont and tops all active trainers with more than 7,300 career victories.

The Desormeaux brothers were left to look for explanations after Exaggerator was so decisively beaten that Kent stopped urging him and wound up 11th. Lani, largely known before this for his bad-boy antics, rewarded the extensive conditioning program given to him by Japanese trainer Mikio Matsunaga by finishing third.

Exaggerator’s trainer, Keith Desormeaux, said of his horse, “The Triple Crown might have caught up with him. We will have to see.”

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Exaggerator benefited from sloppy tracks when he ruled the Santa Anita Derby by 6¼ widening lengths and took the Preakness by 3½ lengths. Perhaps it was a sign that the son of two-time Horse of the Year Curlin had used up all of his good fortune that a powerful thunderstorm brought heavy rain only after Creator and Destin rushed to the wire almost as one.

“I was hoping to dispel the sloppy track thing, but that has to come into it as well,” Keith Desormeaux said. “I think it’s mostly Belmont is a deep, sandy surface. He might have had a little trouble with it.”

Creator, a son of white-hot sire Tapit as is Lani, earned only the fourth nose victory in Belmont history. Interestingly, it was the first such triumph since Victory Gallop, ridden by Gary Stevens in a memorable exercise of patience, denied Kent Desormeaux’s Triple Crown bid aboard Real Quiet in 1998.

Desormeaux was second-guessed then for possibly moving Real Quiet too soon. This time, he found himself a rather helpless passenger. “When I picked him up at the quarter pole to try to win the race, there was nothing there,” he said.

He suggested the uncommon distance might have been asking too much for a 3-year-old making his third start in five weeks. Lani was the only other Belmont starter to make all three legs of the Triple Crown.

“We’ll probably get him back to what he enjoys, a mile and a quarter,” Kent Desormeaux said.

Asmussen and WinStar Farm, which purchased Creator for $440,000 as a yearling, must be credited for more than that hefty transaction. They kept faith in him after he finished a troubled 13th under Ricardo Santana Jr. in the Derby, and they made two major decisions after that. They replaced Santana with Ortiz and opted to start Gettysburg to ensure that there would be a solid pace for Creator, a deep closer.

Both moves helped to make the difference. Asmussen said of Ortiz, “He saved yards and won by inches.”

Gettysburg met his responsibilities by taking the field through an opening quarter of 24.09 seconds and an opening half-mile in 48.48. He was still showing the way through three-quarters of a mile, which went in 1:13.28.

Creator paid $34.80 to win. He covered the marathon distance in 2:28.51. Beyond that, he fulfilled the promise that Elliott Walden, chief executive at WinStar and a deeply religious man, was convinced was there when he named him.

“I liked the horse an awful lot as a 2-year-old,” Walden said. “That might have given me a sign, I don’t know.”

Lani will return to his home base in Japan, having shown there is considerable ability to go with eccentricities that will not soon be forgotten. The studdish, ultra-aggressive colt was kept in a boarded-up stall at Belmont Park so he would not react to the sight of other horses.

After two handlers led him onto the track, he was nowhere to be found when “New York, New York,” was played during the pre-race post parade. He had been taken by jockey Yutaka Take to be by himself around the final turn. After being reluctant to load into the starting gate, he was full of run toward the end, finishing 2½ lengths behind Creator.

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