Star of the show on a stakes-laden weekend as the Belmont Stakes Festival moved to Saratoga was last year’s Preakness Stakes winner National Treasure, who slammed his rivals for a 6¼-length victory in the Metropolitan Handicap.
The Bob Baffert-trained four-year-old is a tough nut to crack on the front end, and he went gate-to-wire in the historic $1m event better known as the Met Mile to earn a major points boost on Thoroughbred Racing Commentary’s exclusive Global Rankings, where he jumps into the Top 3 overall. He is now the highest-ranked dirt performer on our list.
National Treasure (+231pt, #3 from #33) lost his way a little after winning the Preakness before making Cody’s Wish pull out all the stops in the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile.
He came back to win the Pegasus World Cup, while a subsequent fourth place in the Saudi Cup reads better in retrospect given that he raced prominently in a contest with a significant pace collapse.
Cutting back to a mile for the Met Mile – held at Saratoga while Belmont Park undergoes a multi-million-dollar renovation – he dictated affairs before charging away down the stretch to finish strongly from Post Time.
“He’s a good horse and in his last couple works, he tipped me off that, ‘Hey, I’m back,’” Baffert said. “I’m proud of the horse. When he shows up, he’s super.”
Breeders’ Cup Classic winner White Abarrio (-40pt, #40 from #30) again disappointed in fifth of six; he has questions to answer now as he rejoins original trainer Saffie Joseph from Rick Dutrow.
The muddled picture among the US three-year-old crop wasn’t clarified by the main event as Dornoch (+202pt, #65 from #224) claimed the Belmont Stakes by a half-length from lightly-raced Mindframe, who plotted an errant course in the final furlong.
“I told everybody last year that he is the best horse I have ever trained,” said Kentucky-based trainer Danny Gargan (+185pt, #150 from #278).
“We have always been high on him and liked him – he is a cool horse,” said Gargan, who completed a fine weekend on Sunday with a G3 victory at Churchill Downs courtesy of Society Man.
Mystik Dan (scoped dirty after the race) and Seize The Grey, winners of the first two legs of the Triple Crown, were down the field in round three, run over a mile and a quarter instead of its traditional mile and a half.
Frankly, it’s a job to know which horse truly leads the division among the males – despite missing the entire Triple Crown, #34 Muth leads the way from Saudi Derby runner-up Book’em Danno (+523pt, #41 from #972), who just misses the Top 40 after his victory in the G1 Woody Stephens. Belmont third Sierra Leone (-39pt, #43 from #17) slips down the pecking order.
However, it is a different story among the fillies, where Kentucky Oaks winner Thorpedo Anna (+179pt, #18 from #77) confirmed her leading status in no uncertain terms with a 5½-length win in the G1 Acorn on Friday’s card.
“She came out of it great,” said trainer Kenny McPeek. “She lost a shoe going into the first turn, and for her to run as well as she did with a shoe missing is pretty impressive.
“The foot was a little tender coming out of the race, but we’ve soaked it and reset the shoe – no problem there.”
Among other big movers at Saratoga were Measured Time (+170pt, #15 from #65), who led home a Godolphin one-two in the Manhattan, Jaipur winner Cogburn (+213pt, #45 from #173), New York Stakes heroine Didia (+166pt, #72 from #203) and Randomized (+155, #81 from #219), who just held off the estimable Idiomatic in the Ogden Phipps.
Despite Idiomatic’s narrow defeat, her sire Curlin (+16pt, #3 from #4) is now the leading US sire overall on our rankings, swapping places with Into Mischief. Irad Ortiz (+36pt, #3 from #4) overtakes Flavien Prat to be top US-based rider after G1 wins on Cogburn, Book’em Danno and Chili Flag (Just A Game) plus G2 scorer Crupi.
• Unlike traditional methods of racehorse rankings, TRC Global Rankings are a measure of an individual’s level of achievement over a rolling three-year period, providing a principled hierarchy of the leading horses, jockeys, trainers, owners and sires using statistical learning techniques. Racehorse rankings can be compared to similar exercises in other sports, like the golf’s world rankings or the ATP rankings in tennis.
They are formulated from the last three years of races we consider Group or Graded class all over the world and update automatically each week according to the quality of a horse’s performances and their recency, taking into account how races work out.
• View the latest TRC Global Rankings for horses / jockeys / trainers / sires
World rankings: Romantic Warrior claims #1 spot – at expense of Hong Kong compatriot Golden Sixty