“Man, we’ve only got one Ritchie and might not get another one, so we’ve got to do what’s right,” he said Tuesday. If that means standing up to the entire racing industry and deflating the Triple Crown, so be it. This is the horse of a lifetime to be handled with care.
#FIRST TOUCH SOCCER KITS 2015 FULL#
Pletcher bowed to the racing tradition in part because, as one of the leading trainers in America, he had a stable full of other candidates for the big races.Įric Reed? No such luxury. Trainer Todd Pletcher, who has had little use for the Preakness, reluctantly sent Derby winners Super Saver (2010) and Always Dreaming (2017) to Pimlico. (As it turned out, Country House never ran another step after winning the Derby at 65-1.) In 2020, trainer Bill Mott had no real interest in the Preakness after winning the Derby by disqualification with Country House, and when that horse spiked a fever, he had a reason not to go. The last time a healthy Derby winner skipped the Preakness was 1985, when Spend A Buck was instead lured to the Jersey Derby by a $2 million bonus. (If Rich Strike hadn’t scratched into the Derby at the last minute, the plan was to point him toward the Belmont with a prep race-the Peter Pan Stakes-in between.) Racing in the Run for the Roses and Belmont and skipping the Preakness is an increasingly popular strategy for everyone who doesn’t win the Derby.īut for the Derby winner? That would be wildly unpopular. In a vacuum, Reed would keep a colt bred for distance out of the Preakness and point him toward the 1 1/2-mile Belmont on June 11, the third leg of the Triple Crown. It would increase the chances of horses running in all three legs, but when American Pharoah ended a 37-year Triple Crown drought in 2015, no one wanted to consider those changes anymore.) (For at least 15 years, I’ve advocated for changing the Triple Crown to the following calendar: the Kentucky Derby stays on the first Saturday in May the Preakness moves to the first Saturday in June the Belmont is contested on the Fourth of July, when the competition for viewers is midseason baseball and hot dog eating contests. The Triple Crown, an early 20th century construct with three races in a span of 35 days, runs counter to that approach.
Many trainers opt for schedules along those lines now. Reed has never run Rich Strike on less than three weeks’ rest between starts and spaces most of his horse’s races four or five weeks apart. So the race dynamics were working against Rich Strike. Instead, he said the decision would come Saturday, after “Ritchie” worked at Churchill Downs. He sounded like he was willing to bypass the second leg of the Triple, but couldn’t bring himself to say it. On Tuesday, Reed told Sports Illustrated he wasn’t sure what he would do about the Preakness. That’s why they could say no to an opportunity (and daunting challenge) that almost no one turns down. When you’re a complete outsider to the Triple Crown, how much allure does it actually hold? When the upper echelon of racing has ignored you forever, how much duty do you feel to prop it up by continuing a long-shot quest that isn’t in your horse’s best interests? Not enough to jeopardize the career of the best horse you’ve ever had, and ever will have. They wandered in from the margins of the sport and shocked the world. They got to this dream spot in thoroughbred racing with no experience, connections or commitments in the politics and alliances of big-time thoroughbred racing.
But these guys got here by a different route, a route littered with hard times and heartache, humbling losses, and no fanfare, attention or adulation. It is a serious blow to a reeling sport, putting a feel-good story on ice at a time when it is acutely needed. Rich Strike was set to have another practice run at Churchill Downs on Saturday to determine his Preakness status, but the overall plan changed Thursday.
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