Real Quiet Receives a Big Assist

Real Quiet may have been resting comfortably in his barn at Del Mar on Sunday, but he was gaining ground at the Eclipse Awards ballot box.

Finished for the year because of a hind-leg injury, Real Quiet won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness in May, and Sunday the only horse to beat him in the Triple Crown, Victory Gallop, had to settle for a second-place finish in the $1-million Buick Haskell Handicap at Monmouth Park.

Victory Gallop nosed out Real Quiet in the Belmont Stakes and might have won the Eclipse for best 3-year-old with a sweep of the remaining major races in the division. But the Haskell got away, by 1 1/4 lengths to Coronado’s Quest, and all that remains is the $750,000 Travers at Saratoga on Aug. 29. A Derby-Preakness hand beats a Belmont-Travers pair most of the time.

Coronado’s Quest put away Grand Slam at the top of the stretch and then held off Victory Gallop in the last sixteenth of a mile. Gary Stevens, riding Victory Gallop, claimed foul against Coronado’s Quest and Mike Smith, but the crowding on the rail took place in the final strides and the Monmouth stewards disallowed the claim.

Coronado’s Quest ran 1 1/8 miles in 1:48 3/5 and paid $3.40 as the favorite. Grand Slam finished third. Coronado’s Quest missed the Triple Crown races and isn’t considered a strong contender for an Eclipse.

Smith didn’t think the crowding was a factor, but Stevens said: “In the last 100 yards, Coronado’s Quest began to drift in. There was a hole along the rail and I went for it. In the last two or three strides, Coronado’s Quest really came in on [Victory Gallop].”

Favorite Trick, who won Sunday’s Jim Dandy at Saratoga, probably won’t join the first three Haskell finishers in the Travers.

‘He’s never run a bad race other than the Kentucky Derby,” trainer Bill Mott said of Favorite Trick, the 1997 horse of the year. “And that was because the distance didn’t suit him.”

The Travers and the Derby are both 1 1/4-mile races.

Horse Racing Notes

In one of the best races of the Del Mar meeting, two 5-year-old mares traded leads through the stretch before Advancing Star won by a nose over Closed Escrow in the Rancho Bernardo Handicap. Advancing Star gave jockey Chris McCarron his fourth consecutive win in the Rancho Bernardo and his eighth overall.