Belmont May Lack a Star but Still Has Name Appeal

Trainer Bob Baffert blames the scrapping of the $1-million bonus. A colleague, Allen Jerkens, says horses aren’t bred the way they used to be, and other trainers, such as Nick Zito and Billy Turner, agree.

These are some of the backstretch theories about why today’s 132nd running of the Belmont Stakes--a $1-million race and the so-called climax to the Triple Crown--has come up so weak. When the 11 3-year-olds are loaded into the gate for the 1 1/2-mile marathon, Fusaichi Pegasus, the Kentucky Derby winner, will be resting in his barn at Hollywood Park, and Red Bullet, the Preakness winner, will be relaxing in his stall at Belmont Park. For the first time in 30 years, the Belmont won’t be graced by either the Derby or the Preakness winner, and already some of racing’s consciences are suggesting that the Triple Crown needs to be reinvented.

Trainers Carl Nafzger and Wayne Lukas, who have horses running in today’s Belmont, have trouble fathoming the furor.

“Personally, I think it’s been a great Triple Crown,” Nafzger said. “There’s nothing wrong with it. We’ve still got Impeachment around, and he’s run a couple of big thirds in the first two races. My owner [Jim Tafel, who races Unshaded] is putting up [a $100,000 supplement] just to run, so that ought to tell you what we think of our horse. There’s nothing wrong with the quality of these 3-year-olds. It’s just that people target their races more now. A good horse only needs to run eight or nine times, so there are some races you just have to miss.”

Unshaded, not nominated for the Triple Crown races in January, when the fee was only $600, or by April 1, when it would have cost $6,000, is 5-1 on the morning line, the co-third choice with Wheelaway. Aptitude is the 8-5 favorite, based mostly on his late-running second to Fusaichi Pegasus in the Derby, and after him comes Impeachment, who won his only race in 1999 and has earned $269,950 this year even though he’s winless in seven starts.

Lukas, whose three Belmont wins came in succession, starting in 1994, acknowledges he’s reaching with Commendable, who was 17th in the Derby and has never run better than fourth since his maiden win at Del Mar more than nine months ago.

“Top to bottom, I think this is a pretty good Belmont,” Lukas said. “It’s a nice bunch of 3-year-olds, and just because there’s no standout doesn’t mean these aren’t good horses. I think this group will end up beating one another as the year goes on. If you ran the Derby over, I think you could make a case for [Aptitude] winning it. But even though he was second then, he’s no cinch here, either.”

The facts remain, though, that the 11 horses have accounted for only seven stakes wins, three of those by Globalize and none of the seven a Grade I race. The only horse in the field with a win in his last race is Postponed, who beat Unshaded by three-quarters of a length in the Peter Pan Stakes at Belmont Park two weeks ago. Belmont Park will be hard-pressed to draw half of the record 85,818 that came last year, when Lukas’ Charismatic was foiled in his bid for a Triple Crown sweep. The Long Island track had drawn 70,000 or more in the two previous years, when Real Quiet and Silver Charm also came into the Belmont off Derby-Preakness wins.

Zito, who has won the Derby twice and the Preakness once, besides finishing second four times in his hometown race, the Belmont, lost his best prospect, Greenwood Lake, to injury early in the year and has been a nonentity in this Triple Crown. Trying not to sound like a trainer nibbling on sour grapes, Zito said Belmont fields like this one can occasionally happen because the breeding program in the United States has been diluted.

“First of all,” Zito said, “the sheiks [from Dubai] have taken away the mothers [the dams] of some of our best horses. But many of our breeders are also to blame. Too many people are breeding horses just to sell, not to race. All they care about is just getting the horse to market. But it’d be a nice year to have a Belmont horse, wouldn’t it? But I don’t have one, and neither does Wayne. Oh, he’s got a horse in the race, but he’ll pay $75 if he wins it.”

Like Zito, Baffert is also missing from this year’s Belmont. Baffert doubled up in the Triple Crown with Silver Charm and Real Quiet, winning the first two legs before those colts came up short here, and last year he saddled the filly Silverbulletday for a seventh-place finish. He’s an advocate of bringing back the $1-million Triple Crown bonus that was used from 1987 through 1993. A horse with the most points for high finishes in the three races would earn the $1 million, providing he finished all three races.

The late Paul Mellon, owner of Sea Hero, was embarrassed to accept the bonus in 1993. Prairie Bayou could have earned the money, but he broke down in the Belmont and was destroyed. A chagrined Mellon turned over the $1 million to equine research.

Baffert feels that a participation bonus could be effective again. But the downside is that such a bonus could force trainers to run horses that aren’t 100% physically.

Although New York-based Allen Jerkens is in the trainers’ wing of the Racing Hall of Fame, he has never won a Belmont.

“Horses years ago were tougher than the ones we’re breeding now,” Jerkens said. “They breed for speed, speed, speed, and that’s not right. We broke our yearlings earlier, and were breezing them at the track by November of their yearling years. Now, 2-year-olds, most of them, are short on experience. It used to be that there were more owners who also raced their horses. So they bred them accordingly. Now the idea is to breed to sell.”

One of Jerkens’ iron horses was Beau Purple, who beat the immortal Kelso three times. Two days before Beau Purple’s Suburban Handicap win in 1962, he worked a mile in a remarkable 1:37. He won two more major races in New York, worked 1 1/8 miles in a startling 1:48 3/5 and went to Chicago and won the Hawthorne Gold Cup. Then he opened 1963 in Florida with his third victory over Kelso, in the Widener Handicap at Hialeah.

Billy Turner trained Seattle Slew, the second-to-last horse to sweep the Triple Crown. That was in 1977. In 1978, Affirmed became the 11th and last horse to win it.

“Now we have surgeries that take out [bone] chips in no time, and we’ve got procedures that correct wind problems that some horses have,” Turner said. “So you’d think these things would add up to better horses, but that hasn’t happened. It used to be that you’d never breed to a broodmare that was a bleeder. But now we give our bleeders Lasix, and then breed them. What we’ve got, then, is three or four generations of bleeders on the track.”

Nafzger remembered that Unbridled, his 1990 Derby winner, was forced to run without Lasix in the Belmont because New York rules prohibited the race-day use of the diuretic then. That rule has been ditched, and today all 11 horses will race with Lasix.

Nafzger remains upbeat about the Triple Crown. It’s indestructible, he thinks, and he disagrees with Jerkens, Turner and Zito in their analyses of the breed.

“The Triple Crown hasn’t lost anything, it’s a historical event,” Nafzger said. “It has historical significance, and you can’t beat that. The horses of today aren’t any less durable, it’s just that we put more pressure on them by racing them year-round.”

In the 132nd Belmont, Nafzger seems to have put pressure on himself.

“I just hope Unshaded runs his race,” he said. “Because I’m the idiot who suggested that we put up all this money to run.”

Horse Racing Notes

The temperature is expected to be in the 90s today, with the possibility of thunderstorms. . . . In England on Friday, Chris McCarron rode Fantastic Light to a second-place finish in the Coronation Cup at Epsom. Melikah, also ridden by the California-based jockey, was third in the Epsom Oaks, and McCarron was fourth with another mount. McCarron rides Best Of The Best in today’s Epsom Derby. King’s Best, the Epsom favorite, came up lame and has been scratched.

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Belmont Field

Field for today’s 132nd Belmont Stakes. Weights: 126 pounds. Supplemental entry: Unshaded. Distance: 1 1/2 miles. Purse: $1 million. First place: $600,000. Second place: $200,000. Third place: $110,000. Fourth place: $60,000. Fifth place: $30,000. Post time: 2:27 p.m. PDT. TV: Channel 7 (coverage starts 1:30 p.m. PDT):

PP Horse: 1. Appearing Now

Jockey: Mike Luzzi

Trainer: Juan Ortiz

Owner: John Valentino

Odds: 30-1

*

PP Horse: 2. Postponed

Jockey: Edgar Prado

Trainer: Scotty Schulhofer

Owner: Jeanne Vance

Odds: 6-1

*

PP Horse: 3. Commendable

Jockey: Pat Day

Trainer: Wayne Lukas

Owner: Robert and Beverly Lewis

Odds: 20-1

*

PP Horse: 4. Unshaded

Jockey: Shane Sellers

Trainer: Carl Nafzger

Owner: James Tafel

Odds: 5-1

*

PP Horse: 5. Aptitude

Jockey: Alex Solis

Trainer: Bobby Frankel

Owner: Juddmonte Farms

Odds: 8-5

*

PP Horse: 6. Globalize

Jockey: Mike Smith

Trainer: Jerry Hollendorfer

Owner: Hollendorfer, Litt & Todaro

Odds: 20-1

*

PP Horse: 7. Curule

Jockey: Jerry Bailey

Trainer: Saeed bin Suroor

Owner: Godolphin Racing

Odds: 15-1

*

PP Horse: 8. Impeachment

Jockey: Craig Perret

Trainer: Todd Pletcher

Owner: Dogwood Stable

Odds: 9-2

*

PP Horse: 9. Wheelaway

Jockey: Richard Migliore

Trainer: John Kimmel

Owner: Kimmel & Solondz

Odds: 5-1

*

PP Horse: 10. Hugh Hefner

Jockey: Jorge Chavez

Trainer: Marty Jones

Owner: King Edward Racing Stable

Odds: 50-1

*

PP Horse: 11. Tahkodha Hills

Jockey: Eibar Coa

Trainer: Ralph Ziadie

Owner: Centaur Farms

Odds: 30-1