TRYING TO PULL HIS LEG
For trainer Wayne Lukas, who has won 13 Triple Crown races, it’s a foregone conclusion that Giacomo won’t add to his Kentucky Derby laurels in today’s $1-million Preakness.
“Looking at this field of horses, I see them beating one another the rest of the year,” Lukas said. “These five top races for 3-year-olds [the Triple Crown, the Haskell and the Travers], I can see five different horses winning. I definitely think there’s not going to be a Triple Crown winner this time.”
If there’s a loss in the cards for Giacomo at Pimlico, it’s not likely to be dealt by Lukas’ barn. The Hall of Fame trainer has won the Preakness five times -- he won the Baltimore race twice before he won his first of four Kentucky Derbies -- but his horse today is Going Wild, who has been thrashed so badly in his last three races that he seems a better fit for the Sir Barton, a shorter stake on the Preakness undercard.
Going Wild, who has good gate speed and is expected to have a say in the Preakness’ early running, is a generous 30-1 on the morning line. Giacomo, despite his Derby win, is no better than the fourth choice, at 6-1.
Afleet Alex, a close third in the Derby, is the 5-2 favorite, followed by High Fly, 10th at Churchill Downs, at 9-2, and Closing Argument, 5-1. Closing Argument ran second, beaten by half a length, in the Derby.
With a capacity field of 14, the Preakness will have a full house in the starting gate for the first time since 1992, and Lukas is not the only horseman painting Giacomo as vulnerable.
“If you don’t run, you can’t even lose,” said trainer Nick Zito, sounding not unlike Yogi Berra. “People tell me that Giacomo is a bigger and stronger horse than he was in the Derby. If that’s true, then we’re all in trouble. What I’d like to do is turn this around.
“Redemption? That’s a strong word. I saw that FDR movie on TV the other night. That’s the kind of thing that keeps us all going. If FDR, a guy in a wheelchair, can go on to do what he did, then there’s hope for us all.”
Zito has lost some big races -- in this game, even Hall of Fame trainers lose many more than they win -- but he took his biggest hit in the Derby. Two weeks ago, he ran five horses, all of them considered contenders, and the best they did was seventh. Three of those colts -- High Fly, Noble Causeway and Sun King -- are back for more in the Preakness.
Nine years ago, Zito won his only Preakness with a horse that had run 16th in the Derby.
“I knew that Louis Quatorze was a quality horse,” Zito said. “But you couldn’t find him in the Derby. Then he came to Pimlico and won.”
Inadvertently, Lukas played a role in that reversal. Pat Day, who had ridden Prince Of Thieves to a third-place finish in the Derby -- a race won by Lukas’ Grindstone -- was dumped by the trainer in favor of Jerry Bailey for the Preakness.
“Everything worked out perfectly,” Zito said. “For some reason, Wayne got mad at Pat or something after the Derby. I needed a rider, and Pat rode Louis Quatorze perfectly.”
Zito gave an interview under a barn-area tent Friday, the better to avoid the steady, heavy rain that was hammering Pimlico. More than an inch was expected to fall before there was a clearing. The forecast today is for some sunshine, a temperature of about 70 degrees and a track that’s expected to be fast.
Down the shedrow of the stakes barn, not far from where Zito was talking, trainer Tim Ritchey was tending to Afleet Alex, who was beaten by only a length as the second choice, after Zito’s Bellamy Road, in the Derby. A Derby newcomer -- as was John Shirreffs, who saddled Giacomo -- Ritchey has run one Preakness horse, finishing seventh with Marciano in 2001.
If Afleet Alex, winner of the Arkansas Derby, had a middle name, it would be consistency. Throwing out a race in which he ran with a latent lung infection, Ritchey’s horse has six wins, two seconds and one third in nine tries. In those three losses, he has been beaten by a combined 2 1/4 lengths.
Ritchey has not worked Afleet Alex since the Kentucky race, but he frequently takes the horse to the track twice a morning, once more than the rest of the trainer’s horses.
“I want a fresher horse for this race,” Ritchey said. “It’s not unusual. Smarty Jones [a Derby-Preakness winner] did the same thing last year.”
Jeremy Rose was riding in his first Derby, but he gave Afleet Alex a heady ride. The congestion in the 20-horse field forced Rose to change directions several times, and every move he made was the right one.
Rose, 26, has never ridden in a Preakness, but he knows Pimlico as well as any rider. He broke in on the Maryland circuit, late in 2000, and between Pimlico and Laurel Park he has won nearly 400 races, including a victory on the Preakness undercard in 2003.
Often in such situations, a young jockey would have by now been replaced by a marquee rider. It happens routinely with Triple Crown contenders. But Ritchey and his owners have stayed with the rider who has been aboard Afleet Alex for all of his wins. Now they have a home-court advantage in the Preakness.