We hit the exactor in the Derby with Nyquist and Exaggerator and I can’t see it going any differently.
Advertisement
“In an ideal world, we wanted to be outside all the speed horses”. We’re so blessed to have such an awesome horse who has so many gifts, one of them being that he leaves the gate running. He was feeling that good.
A determined Desormeaux keeps trying to convince himself Exaggerator is ready to run down Nyquist, the unbeaten 3-5 favourite in Saturday’s 11-horse field. Exactly two weeks after the three-year-old colt won the Kentucky Derby, Nyquist heads into the second leg of the Triple Crown at odds of 3-5 to cross the finish line first.
Even the rain predicted for Saturday seemed to strike his connections as a mere inconvenience.
“With his gate speed, the post position draw wasn’t as important”, O’Neill said. That’s a great ability to recover. He can continue to leave would-be rivals searching for any sign that, maybe, the fire in Nyquist’s belly is starting to dim. While that may seemingly play right into the hands of closers like Exaggerator and stakes victor Fellowship, O’Neill reminds that one would be hard pressed to find a quicker pace than the one his horse tracked two weeks prior.
Exaggerator’s jockey, Kent Desormeaux, said he lost momentum on his late runner heading into the far turn.
The 11 horse field goes to post for the 141st run for the Black-Eyed Susans on Saturday, 21 May 2016 at approximately 23:20 local time. “No big deal”, Desormeaux said.
Lani, a Derby starter who has done much of his racing in Japan, has the No. 6 post position and is listed at 30-1.
From there, the field of 11 consists of fresh competitors looking to pull a startling upset.
Of course, last year, Baffert was the king of Baltimore as he brought American Pharoah to town for a stop on his way to becoming the sport’s first Triple Crown victor in 37 years.
Collected, trained by Bob Baffert and ridden by Javier Castellano, drew the No. 7 spot and is listed at 10-1.
“This is like, take a shot here”, Baffert said Wednesday morning. “We can’t think about it. We can’t think about Belmont because we’re not even to Baltimore yet”, Gutierrez said.
“One rarely sees such an enormous colt with quite Majestic Prince’s finish”, praised Charles Hatton, the era’s recognized authority on such things. The buzz horse from that group, Stradivari, has won his last two races by a combined twenty-five lengths but has only made three career starts and the Preakness will be his first attempt against stakes horses. Will the track conditions affect the outcome of the race? But it definitely helps when you have a horse that can adjust to the scenario given to him. And was a convincing victor of Kentucky Derby 142 on May 7.
“I’d probably be surprised if he didn’t win”.
Kentucky Derby runner up Exaggerator was installed as the 3-to-1 second choice.
“It was a very fast race”.
I don’t expect this race to be as exciting as the Derby, but we can make it so. We came through on the inside and…Swipe was full of run and we hooked him at the eighth pole and got to his throatlatch and Nyquist dug down again.
“We were high-fiving and it was a special performance, but it became clear he was a special horse to me when he won the Best Pal at Del Mar [in his second race] and he was eased up at the wire”.
“We’re here to be competitive”, he said, but “I can’t really try to talk myself into it that I’m going to blow Nyquist away and the rest of the field”.
Nyquist will be heavily-favored to complete that task, although challengers and non-believers abound. He thought he had him in the San Vicente, but Nyquist came out on top. Jockey Jevian Toledo commented, “I think it’s a good position between some nice horses (Nyquist and Exaggerator). He’s going to have to regress a bit”. And No. 2 isn’t so great, either, given to Santa Anita-based Uncle Lino. He’s simply a good runner who shies in the face of adversity.
It does matter for Uncle Lino, whose trainer Gary Sherlock was hoping to draw a little further outside.
Advertisement
Nyquist trainer O’Neill brushed aside concerns about a wet track. He’ll start from the 10th post 30-1 choice in the morning line. She did all of her winning in sprints of six and seven furlongs but was able to give top fillies like Ashado all they could handle in Grade one races such as the Go For Wand Handicap in 2005.
