Kentucky Derby winner Animal Kingdom is a slight favourite over Nehro and Preakness winner Shackleford for Saturday’s 143rd Belmont Stakes.
Bookmakers have Animal Kingdom at 2-1 with Derby runner-up Nehro at 4-1 and Shackleford, the outside starter in a field of 12, at 9-2 in the last event of the American flat racing Triple Crown series over a gruelling mile and a half (2400m).
“Obviously going a mile and a half, the most important thing is to save as much as you can for the last quarter of a mile (400m),” Animal Kingdom’s jockey John Velazquez, who won the 2007 Belmont aboard Rags to Riches, said.
Animal Kingdom, who starts from gate nine, was foiled in a bid to become the first horse to sweep the Triple Crown races since Affirmed in 1978 when Shackleford edged the colt by half a length in the shortest race of the treble.
Shackleford’s trainer Dale Romans has no worry that starting from the outside will be a great setback over such a distance after watching jockey Jesus Castanon ride his horse to a wire-to-wire Preakness victory.
“In a mile-and-a-half race, the post position isn’t that important,” Romans said.
“With number 12, he’ll be the last one in and the first one out. Hopefully, he’ll be able to clear the field.
“Being there, it will probably make us spend a little bit more. Everybody expects us to be on the lead, and we expect to be on the lead. He’s fast enough that he’ll be able to break and clear everyone anyway.
“(Animal Kingdom) never got past us on the gallop out and he never looked like he was going past us.”
Velazquez hopes Shackleford goes for another start-to-finish victory.
“The Belmont will be a completely different race, so if he tries something like that, good luck to him,” Velazquez said.
“I think at a mile and a half, Animal Kingdom is going to be closing like he did in the Derby.”
Graham Motion, Animal Kingdom’s British-born trainer, sees the outside starting spot as a significant disadvantage.
“The 12 is right near the grandstand and I’m happy he is in the 12. It will make him work a little bit,” Motion said.
“It’s going to be a tactical race, no doubt about it.”
Affirmed co-owner Patrice Jacobs Wolfston hinted that the reason no horse since hers a third of a century ago has swept the Triple Crown is because the animals are pampered too much.
“I believe horses were tougher back then. Three to four weeks (between races) was a long time,” she said. “Racing has changed. In some ways, maybe for the better. In other ways, maybe not.”
In the first match-up of Derby and Preakness winners at the Belmont since 2005, Animal Kingdom will try to become only the 12th horse to win the Belmont and the Derby and the first since Thunder Gulch in 1995.
AFP AAP TURF
