He pulled 3½ lengths ahead of Cherry Wine to win the 1-3/16-mile race in a time of 1 minute, 58.31 seconds. He sat back early while Uncle Lino was setting the fastest first quarter time in Preakness history (22.38) with Nyquist just off of his right flank.
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It was a scenario that had never occurred before. After graduation, Keith served as Maryland trainer Charles Hadry’s assistant before going out on his own.
Not Saturday, not in this Preakness. Now, Exaggerator has won the biggest race at Pimlico, the middle jewel of the Triple Crown.
Other tentative entrants in the Belmont: Lani, who finished ninth in the Derby and fifth in the Preakness; Cherry Wine, the Preakness runner-up; Suddenbreakingnews; Brody’s Cause; and Destin.
“I didn’t think he could get beat today, to be honest with you”.
Pramedya, a 4-year-old, broke its left front leg during the fourth race and collapsed, said the Post.
“I wanted him to have a good, clean trip, free-running”, he said.
The previously unbeaten Doug O’Neill-trained Nyquist was the hot favourite to add to his Kentucky Derby laurels and in doing so move one win away from emulating American Pharoah’s heroics from 12 months ago. The public bought into it: Not only was Nyquist the 3-5 betting favourite, but a record crowd of 135,256 showed up in miserable weather.
The inside draw factored into the aggressive strategy, O’Neill said. The defeat was the first in Nyquist’s nine-race career.
Showdowns beyond the Triple Crown series possible, even as Nyquist (Darley in America) and Exaggerator (WinStar Farm) already have contracts in place for their breeding careers. But Nyquist would not torment Exaggerator again on this day.
Winning trainer Keith Desormeaux, brother of the jockey, said he was confident in his horse regardless of conditions.
The jockey said the key to victory was Exaggerator’s ability to run near the inside fence while the other horses took a wider path. “It’s not someone who needs to grind down his opponent”.
Kent Desormeaux, a Hall of Fame jockey, also had plenty to be thankful for. The allure of Nyquist racing at Belmont is gone, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Nyquist not run in two weeks. “And the fast pace would be blamed on me, because I just didn’t want any traffic trouble going into the first turn”. “We won’t know until they do a necropsy on him, just to find out exactly what happened”.
But when the rain came, Exaggerator stole the thunder. There was nothing we could do. “We thought we had the best horse and wanted to ride him like the best horse and not try to get cute and get flawless positioning”, he said.
Afterward, O’Neill was stunned to have lost but grateful to have gone this far with an undefeated horse.
It’s a bummer, of course. They all lose at one time or another. Nyquist’s ownership team announced Sunday morning that their horse will head to Belmont on Monday and, if all remains well, will race on June 11.
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“I’ve come in here weird many years”, said the white-haired trainer, joking.
