Giacomo May Get Another Shot at Afleet Alex

Giacomo is scheduled to be flown to California today and will soon be back at his barn at Hollywood Park.

Assuming the horse continues to train well, he is likely to have a rubber match with Afleet Alex in the Belmont Stakes on June 11.

Giacomo won the Derby, with Afleet Alex third, and then the horses swapped those positions in Saturday’s Preakness.

“I’m happy and proud,” Giacomo’s owner, Jerry Moss, said of the Preakness. “He ran a nice race, he just didn’t win.”

Giacomo made a late run, just as he had done in the longer Derby two weeks ago, but he fell 9 3/4 lengths short.

“We beat 19 horses in the Derby, and we beat 11 horses [Saturday],” Moss said. “That’s pretty good. You win some and you lose some. The horse has earned some R & R in California. We’ll get him back running again, and see if we can win the Eclipse Award [for best 3-year-old male] by the end of the year.”

Mike Smith, who rode Giacomo, had no real excuse.

Smith said his colt might have done better had he been able to move him into a better position, one that Sun King took up, but he didn’t suggest that that would have been enough to overhaul Afleet Alex.

“Mike mentioned trouble with getting through,” said John Shirreffs, who trains Giacomo. “The horse doesn’t accelerate that well and had trouble getting to the opening.”

This is only the third time in the last nine years that a horse won’t be going for a Triple Crown sweep in the Belmont.

At the start of the year, Moss and Shirreffs tentatively penciled in the Derby and the Belmont -- and not necessarily the Preakness -- for Giacomo.

“The longer races in the series better suit his running style,” Moss said. “I’d love to run in the Belmont, assuming John wants to go. I’d like to give him another chance.”

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For trainer Nick Zito, it was not the best of days, but nor was it the worst.

Zito’s three entries in the Preakness -- Sun King, Noble Causeway and High Fly -- finished fourth, sixth and 10th, respectively, in the Triple Crown race, but he did manage to win the 13th running of the $100,000 Sir Barton Stakes earlier in the program.

Pinpoint, under jockey Rafael Bejarano, scored a three-quarter-length victory for owner Arthur B. Hancock III, covering the 1 1/16 miles in 1:44.43. Earlier, Gary Stevens won an allowance race for Zito aboard Indy Storm.

But it was the three Preakness performers that left Zito looking a little glum by day’s end.

“No excuses,” he said. “[Jockey Jerry] Bailey said that High Fly was slipping around there from the word go. Noble Causeway, the jockey [Stevens] said he tried. Sun King ran a good race to be fourth.

“It’s disappointing for what we’re trying to accomplish, but really it’s not that disappointing. There’s always somebody better.”

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Closing Argument, which finished a stunning second in the Kentucky Derby after going off at 71-1, had no such luck for trainer Kiaran McLaughlin and jockey Cornelio Velasquez on Saturday.

The Florida-bred bay colt was in the middle of the pack the whole way and finished ninth.

“Cornelio said he didn’t handle the racetrack,” McLaughlin said. “He wasn’t traveling well over it.

“He didn’t have a good day and he didn’t like the track. Maybe [coming] back in two weeks [after the Derby] was not a positive either.”

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The total amount bet on the 13 races on Preakness day was $85,251,004, according to the Maryland Jockey Club, including $58,028,728 that was wagered on the Triple Crown race alone.... The Preakness was won for the 21st time in the last 22 years by a horse who had run in the Derby.