Longshot New Jersey gelding Sunny Ridge was third.
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EXAGGERATOR, runner-up in the GI Kentucky Derby and victor of the GI Preakness S., bounced back from a tiresome 11th-place effort in the GI Belmont S.to register a convincing victory in the GI betfair.com Haskell Invitational and stake his claim for champion 3-year-old. O’Neill expects his colt to reassert himself as the leader of the 3-year-old division.
Assistant trainer Julie Clark, who has been with the colt at Saratoga while Keith Desormeaux remained with the rest of his stable in California, said the colt’s next start would be in the August 27 Travers at the upstate NY track. “There was such anxiety as they came around the turn”. Unfortunately, another horse cut right in front of me and we were getting bad spray (of mud) so I moved him out from behind the other horses and kept them seven lengths in front of me.
“The trip was great, ” Nyquist jockey Mario Gutierrez said.
– Baffert has won five of the last six Haskells and is seeking a ninth win in Monmouth Park’s showcase race. Exaggerator made his usual late run after starting way behind the rest of the six-horse field.
Exaggerator, who was 8 1/2 lengths back after the first quarter, made his move on the backstretch without Desormeaux, a Hall of Famer, asking him. Any other day, he should be able to attack the pace, Rafael’s (Bejarano) horse (American Freedom) kept going and I didn’t. He was effortlessly galloping. He proved it down the lane.
American Freedom finished second, with long shot Sunny Ridge third and Nyquist fourth.
Gun Runner (Steve Asmussen/Florent Geroux), who pressed the Kentucky Derby pace, took a Grade 3 event at Churchill Downs six weeks ago and should not be ruled out.
Exaggerator paid $7.20 for his sixth win in 13 starts after running 1 1⁄8 miles in the slop in 1:48.70.
With the win, Exaggerator clinched a spot in the field for the Breeders’ Cup Classic on November 5. Exaggerator relishes a late charge to the wire, and splashed his way to victory in the Preakness. The colt will go back to California to train there. Exaggerator, the second choice at 5-2, will break from farthest outside for regular rider Kent Desormeaux.
Nyquist, victor of eight of nine races going into the Haskell, faded to fourth. Sunny Ridge is bred and owned by Dennis Drazin, an advisor to the group that operates the track.
The guy who has been around the Jersey shore track since the early 1970s knew nothing could top the spectacle of American Pharoah: 60,000 fans standing and cheering as the champion charged down the stretch in his first race as the first Triple Crown champion in 37 years.
As Exaggerator passed American Freedom to take the lead, those two appeared to brush together a bit and shortly after the finish the OBJECTION SIGN was lit, as Bejarano had claimed foul against the victor.
“When he came around the turn, he crossed me a couple of times”, Bejarano said. “Once I was clear, of course I came over and kicked some mud back at him”.
His entry was a surprise since hes been training at Saratoga, with plans calling for him to run in the Jim Dandy, then the Travers on August 27. The trainer thought he would get a faster pace than what developed in Saturday’s Jim Dandy Stakes at Saratoga.
“As the race was unfolding, I thought, ‘Perfect, ‘ ” Keith Desormeaux told TVG from his home base in Del Mar, Calif.
O’Neill called it kind of “a shock” when he found out Exaggerator was Haskell-bound.
“They were going head and head pretty aggressively in front of me”, Desormeaux said.
“We’ll decide tomorrow whether to bring him back home or send him to Saratoga”, Baffert said by phone.
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Exaggerator earned $600,000 and boosted his earnings to $3,571,120.
