There are guardians of the Triple Crown.
Racegoers call them the “Gods of Racing.” They prevent anyone unworthy from passing into immortality. The last 11 seekers were denied.
And so it may be with I’ll Have Another in Saturday’s 144th Belmont Stakes.
It’s not an easy veto. The colt was brilliant in winning the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes. Jockey Mario Gutierrez rode to perfection.
But maybe the story of Big Brown will explain why I’ll Have Another won’t win. Big Brown was a big deal entering the 2008 Belmont Stakes. He was a modest 5-0 after easy Derby and Preakness victories.
And Big Brown never finished the Belmont as the 3-10 favorite.
Big Brown trainer Rick Dutrow was cited for 70 violations at 15 tracks for his use of medications. Some saw him as unworthy of saddling a Triple Crown champion. Many trainers receive a medication sanction at some point, but Dutrow was a second-generation horseman whose father, Richard Dutrow, was among Maryland’s top trainers in the 1960s and 1970s. He knew the sport’s rules.
Dutrow administered Winstrol, an anabolic steroid, to Big Brown in the Derby and Preakness, where it was legal. New York banned the drug, though, so the colt ran without it. That Big Brown was pulled up early in the Belmont made the whispers grow louder over Dutrow’s credibility. In 2011, he was banned for 10 years by New York after one of his horses tested positive for a pain killer.
Obviously, the guardians kept a cheater from becoming a Triple Crown champion.
Now it’s Doug O’Neill’s turn for judgment. I’ll Have Another’s trainer was suspended 45 days and fined $15,000 on May 25 after one of his horses tested positive for “milkshaking” last year. Essentially, that’s an old-school method of producing a sugar rush to give the horse extra energy.
O’Neill could have been suspended six months after his horses tested positive for milkshaking for the fourth time. Indeed, another positive over the next 18 months will reinstate the suspension’s remaining 135 days.
O’Neill swears he’s innocent and won’t serve the penalty until after I’ll Have Another goes for the crown Saturday. But the guardians have their own penalties. Notice how I’ll Have Another almost collided with a loose horse while training May 31? Was it a sign? The racetrack is a superstitious place.
Many great trainers never won the Triple Crown. Charlie Whittingham was an icon of the sport when Sunday Silence was beaten in 1989. Bob Baffert is as good a Triple Crown trainer as there has been over the past 15 years, and he has been denied twice, once in a photo finish. D. Wayne Lukas won all three 1995 classics but with two horses.
Maybe I’ll Have Another is worthy of the crown, but O’Neill isn’t, and they come as a package deal. Horse racing’s guardians demand it.
Examiner columnist Rick Snider has covered local sports since 1978. Read more on Twitter @Snide_Remarks or email [email protected].
