Preakness
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by user Willf123
When Secretariat won the triple crown in 1973 he did so in astonishing fashion winning the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and finally the Belmont Stakes by a ridiculous 31 lengths! Later today Street Smart continues its quest for the triple crown at the 137 th Preakness in a field of nine at Pimlico? The triple crown hasn't been won since Affirmed in 1978. The last horse to come close was Smarty Jones in 2004. Is Street Smart the horse to break the drought and win the Visa Triple Crown and the five million dollar bonus? (I believe this is the last year VISA is sponsoring this)
My thought has always been that the next horse to accomplish the feat would be so dominant that there would not be any question that the horse had the ability to win the triple crown from the beginning. I envisioned the horse destroying the field at the Kentucky Derby and going on to win the next 2 in convincing fashion. With that being said, what are the chances that Street Smart will win the next two races?
Unlike most people I really do not consider bloodlines to be a factor in a horse winning. I focus on four key aspects.
- Style – does the horse have the optimum running style for the track being run on? Is the horse a quick starter, good finisher, does the horse set the pace or run with the pack?
- Jockey – does the jockey tend to be aggressive early or late? Is the jockey good in traffic? What is the jockeys familiarity with the horse?
- Past performance – has the horse performed better on short tracks, long tracks? Has the horse been matched up against other horses in this same race before?
- Position/Conditions– Does the horse have a favorable gate or is the horse positioned too far inside or outside? How is the weather? Is the track surface hard or soft?
Who are the favorites? Street Sense, Hard Spun, and Curlin. Circular Quay could also make some noise. This may be a tougher race for Street Sense then the upcoming Belmont because as his trainer DeWayne Lucus stated on CBSsportsline “"I think he fits the Belmont a little bit better," Lukas said. "He's obviously not going to have a distance limitation. He's got that stalking position and he's got that extremely good turn of foot and acceleration. I think you need that. If he gets by this one, we're going to anoint him." The style is not a perfect fit for this horse as evidenced by a time of 2:02.17 in Kentucky which was slower than the time Barbaro put up a year before by almost a second. But, this horse has performed exceeding ly well on this track in the past. Just three races ago Street Sense won on this same track by a record setting 10 lengths on November 10 th. Also Street sense avoided the poor post positions of Mint Slewlep and CP West who are at post positions 1and 9 which almost eliminates them . My only question is that of the jockey Calvin Borel who tends to hug the rail and might get the horse in trouble on this the shortest of the three triple crown races. One thing that can not be argued though is his record . Curlin tends to have trouble running inside Hard Spun tends to stick with the pace which may be deadly in such a short race. So in the end I'm picking the chalk....Street Sense, Hard Spun, Curlin.
My last point is this, if Street Sense or another horse does go on to win the Triple Crown I errored in thinking that the horse needs to be dominant, it just needs to be better then the fields its matched up against and may have a better opportunity of doing so in a down year like this one.
