Three different horses won the three legs of the Triple Crown, leaving us barely any wiser about the hierarchy among US three-year-olds. Steve Dennis examines a murky picture
Who’s the best? We ask that question all the time, and each time it’s asked we’re seeking a slightly different answer.
On raceday we ask that question every half-hour or so, and it’s a temporary answer, the best horse on the day, an open-and-shut case that stays open only as long as the betting windows themselves. On big days we look for a more enduring validation, the best horse of the whole bunch until he or she is usurped by a new best horse, and that conversation lasts as long as those horses keep running.
Then there are the after-dark questions, the ones with historical resonance, the ones that often prioritise heart over head, subjectivity over objectivity, debates arising in the convivial company of the tap-room or in the confrontational mess of social media, or in the solitary small-hours speculation while staring sleeplessly at the ceiling. That conversation is endless, tireless, and there can be no truly definitive answers, although it’s probably Secretariat. Or Frankel. Or Arkle, of course. Remember him?
What about the times when there are no answers at all, though? Welcome to America, and the current impasse among the three-year-old colt crop. Anyone just dropping in to see what condition the Classic generation is in would find no answers, just a vacant chair, a Siege Perilous waiting for a Galahad to gallop in and take his rightful place.
Perplexing flux
Early July, and nothing settled, the season in perplexing flux. That isn’t the case in Europe, which has all its ducks in a row, quacking away complacently. There’s dual Derby winner Auguste Rodin at a mile and a half, or his barnmate Paddington at a mile, and the scintillating filly Blue Rose Cen has smoothly conquered the distaff half of the landscape. But in the US, not so much.
It’s the role of the Triple Crown races to come up with the answers, and this year they’ve been asleep at the switch. Everything was seemingly in place for Forte to parlay his Eclipse Award-winning juvenile form into a memorable Triple Crown campaign, but injury and officialdom intervened and on his comeback he was unconvincing when runner-up in the Belmont.
He is still a major piece of the puzzle given his previous defeats of Kentucky Derby winner Mage and on one metric at least, this website’s renowned Global Rankings, he is well clear of his sophomore peers. Perhaps he may be the answer, but the interrogation is nowhere near complete.
The three Classic winners Mage, National Treasure and Arcangelo have come and gone with no more than a brief authority, an aura of impermanence. Last year left a similarly bland taste in the mouth, although Epicenter was hard to dispute as pro tem leader after having his pocket picked in the Kentucky Derby, after being hamstrung by tactical inflexibility in the Preakness, and he went on to right those wrongs in the Jim Dandy and the Travers.
Less illuminating, less satisfying
This year has been even less illuminating, less satisfying. What do we have to work with? Mage was a convincing winner of the Derby but looked clueless in the wake of a slow pace in the Preakness, and the Churchill Downs runner-up Two Phil’s has been retired through injury. National Treasure came out on top at Pimlico, but it was a poor race and he got everything his own way, and still managed to beat the middling Blazing Sevens by only a head.
Then National Treasure went for the Belmont and patently failed to stay behind the upstart Arcangelo, whose stylish victory must be tempered – as so often in the Belmont – by the certain knowledge that several of those behind simply aren’t made to run a mile and a half, a point of view underpinned by the widening, city-block margins of defeat behind the front four.
And it’s a regrettable fact that unless the Belmont winner already has the other two aces up his sleeve and a crown tilted jauntily over one eye, is a Seattle Slew or an Affirmed or an American Pharoah, it’s relatively rare that his importance sustains beyond high summer, especially in these speed-defined times.
There are others to consider, including the upwardly mobile Saudi Crown, who coughed up his unbeaten record with great reluctance when runner-up to Fort Bragg in the G3 Dwyer at Belmont Park last weekend.
There’s also G1 Woody Stephens winner Arabian Lion, who has run a couple of whip-song Beyers, his half-forgotten barnmate Arabian Knight, who has been on the bench since winning the G3 Southwest on a dim January afternoon, and then there’s the unfinished business belonging to G1 Santa Anita Derby winner Practical Move, who was denied his chance at Churchill Downs through illness.
So many possibilities, but nothing that has yet coalesced into probability, far less certainty. We don’t know who the best US three-year-old colt is yet, and the glamour and historical freight of that division makes that conclusion a little unsettling.
Does it really matter, though? After all, in January they’ll pin the medal on someone’s chest, anyone’s chest. It won’t be like the annals of the Tour de France where there is simply a hole where Lance Armstrong used to be, and by then we’ll have all moved on to the forensic dissection of 2024’s Triple Crown hopefuls. And there’s still the magnificent Cody’s Wish – the late closer who is clear front-runner for Horse of the Year honours – to beguile us in the meantime.
Real deal
But it does matter. Horse racing is almost as much about anticipation as it is about realisation and in Europe the railbirds are basking in the deliciousness of looking forward to the next appearances of Auguste Rodin, Paddington and Blue Rose Cen, in the safe and cosy knowledge that what they are witnessing is the real deal.
This accentuates the pleasure of the sport, provides it with direction, coherence, whereas in the US the anticipation for the Haskell, the Jim Dandy and maybe even unto the glittering prize of the Travers at Saratoga must be alloyed with the nagging notion that what is being served up is alloy itself, brass instead of gold.
The word on the backstretch is that Forte and Arabian Knight may point to the Haskell, Mage may wind up in the Jim Dandy, and Arcangelo could be trained up to the Travers. National Treasure and Arabian Lion have no fixed objective, Saudi Crown has a long way to go, Practical Move may not return until the fall; the division could be mired in a funk of doubt right up until the end of August.
So for a little while longer the empty robe will hang on its peg, waiting for someone to emerge from a roiling sea of challengers to claim it, to wear it, to stand in the middle of the ring with one arm raised so that we can finally see in clear light a champion, the best. Until that happens – if it happens – the song in our hopeful hearts will be that old Johnny Nash number, the one about there being more questions than answers, and the more we find out the less we know.
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