opinion

CHAMPAGNE’S CAMPAIGNS: Justify, The Triple Crown, And a Realist Hoping He’s Wrong

Posted on by Andrew Champagne

Few fans of this game want a Triple Crown more than I do. Four times between 2003 and 2014, I went to Belmont Park begging for a coronation, and four times, I left dejected.

Funny Cide left his race on the training track several days before the race and was no match for Empire Maker, a horse who may as well have been typed into the “Belmont winners” table on Wikipedia the moment Toussaud was bred to Unbridled. Smarty Jones was the victim of something that most closely resembled an ambush, one that makes this handicapper do a double-take whenever a certain jockey-turned-commentator criticizes a ride. California Chrome was stepped on coming out of the gate, but quietly ran a gigantic race in defeat. He looked like a winner up until mid-stretch, when the Cal-Bred That Could finally ran out of gas after taking the sport on the first of two wild rides he’d orchestrate. Big Brown…well, we’ll never really know what happened there, and that proved to be the first domino to fall in one of the most fascinating stories in horse racing history (this Deadspin article is required reading).

I say all of this as a preface to a statement I don’t want to make. It’s one that goes against every fiber of my being as a racing fan, which every turf writer and broadcaster still is at heart. If the below statement is wrong, I will gladly endure the mocking on Twitter that I openly spurn most of the time.

Here goes. Inhale…exhale…Justify will not win the Triple Crown.

(ducks to avoid an onslaught of tomatoes, detached chair legs, and anything else that isn’t nailed down)

Can I come up now and explain myself? OK, good.

What Justify has done to this point in his career is nothing short of phenomenal. It isn’t just that he defied the Curse of Apollo, and it’s not just that he went on to add the Preakness Stakes this past Saturday. In less than 100 days, Justify has gone from an unraced prospect to the biggest name in horse racing, winning five starts in an era where top-level horses often need that 100-day period between races for such cardinal sins as running second or third in a Grade 1.

In this era of racing, horses do not do what Justify has done over the past three-plus months. Gone are the days where 3-year-olds would run six to eight times at two, and then have four or five starts before the Triple Crown on top of that. Present-day horses are bred to be “brilliant,” often being sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars based on “breezes” of one furlong long before they’ve fully matured.

Amidst this environment, Justify has won five races, three of the Grade 1 variety and two designated as American classics. That he has done so makes him an exceptional thoroughbred. That he has done so in slightly longer than it took Phileas Fogg to circumnavigate the globe in Jules Verne’s classic novel, “Around the World in Eighty Days,” puts him in different air than even the best horses we’ve seen in recent racing history.

That journey also makes him appear very vulnerable heading into the 2018 Belmont Stakes.

The obvious reason for not being high on Justify was his run in the Preakness, where he held off Bravazo and Tenfold to win by a rapidly-diminishing half-length. Yes, he had to match strides with the talented Good Magic early, but he did so through reasonable fractions over a very fast track. Those splits were significantly slower than the ones he endured two weeks earlier, and while the final time was sharp (a shade below 1:56 for the 1 3/16-mile distance), it’s worth pointing out, yet again, that the sloppy track consistently produced fast times all day long.

Justify earned a 97 Beyer Speed Figure Saturday, a significant regression from the 103 he earned in the Kentucky Derby (which, itself, was a slight decrease from the 107 number he was given for his win in the Santa Anita Derby). A 97 Beyer Speed Figure may not be enough in three weeks against a field that figures to include several horses freshened up since the Kentucky Derby. The likes of Hofburg, Vino Rosso, and fellow WinStar Farm charge Audible could all be waiting for another shot at Justify, and after Saturday’s step back, it’s tough to say there’s any reason for any of those colts not to try again. Bravazo and Tenfold are nice horses, but Bravazo was a distant sixth in the Kentucky Derby, and Tenfold didn’t even qualify to run in that event.

Furthermore, the Belmont Stakes will be Justify’s sixth race in less than four months. On its own, that’s daunting enough. Consider this, though: Justify will be running in that race, contested at the grueling distance of 1 1/2 miles, after barely holding on over second-tier 3-year-olds going five-sixteenths of a mile shorter, all with a picture-perfect trip. There are times where you can safely assume the Belmont distance won’t be a problem for a horse. This isn’t one of those instances.

One of my best friends in the game is Joe Nevills, and prior to the Kentucky Derby, he did a piece on the average winning distances of each Derby sire. Scat Daddy ranked eighth of 14 sires, with an AWD of just under seven furlongs. Meanwhile, Tapit, who has sired the last two Belmont winners and figures to be represented by Hofburg in this year’s renewal, was second on that list, and Curlin (the sire of Vino Rosso) checked in third. On its own, it’s not necessarily a damning statistic, but given what we saw Saturday and the trials and tribulations that come with running five times since mid-February, there are serious questions about whether this undefeated star can go 12 furlongs.

I would love nothing more than to be wrong about all of this. If Justify reveals himself as a superhorse and gallops home like fellow Bob Baffert trainee American Pharoah did three years ago, that’s just fine with me. Racing needs stars, and it needs them to run consistently over long periods of time. I say this next statement without a shred of hyperbole or exaggeration: If Justify was to pull off a sweep of the Triple Crown races after being an unraced maiden less than four months prior to the Belmont, it would be one of the greatest stories in the history of the game.

Unfortunately, what I saw Saturday at the end of the Preakness wasn’t a horse being eased to the wire like one with plenty in reserve. Mike Smith’s subtle easing of Justify as he came to the wire struck me as a move made to save a few drops of gas for another taxing race in three weeks, one where the competition figures to be considerably tougher (even with the likely absence of Good Magic in mind). As a fan, I crave a Secretariat-like performance, one that puts him in horse racing’s highest pantheon of four-legged immortals that boasts a gate opened just once in the past 40 years.

As a handicapper? I don’t think it’s happening.

Analysis, Selections, and Tickets: 2018 Florida Derby Day, PLUS: A Disturbing Trend in Racing That Must End

Posted on by Andrew Champagne

Before we get into my analysis of Saturday’s Rainbow 6 and late Pick Four sequences at Gulfstream Park, I need to expound on something I’ve been witnessing more and more of as of late. It’s a plague on the sport we enjoy, and it needs to stop.

Earlier this week, the connections of Australian superstar Winx announced that the mare would not ship to Royal Ascot. All hell promptly broke loose on Twitter, with plenty of insult-lobbing from all corners of the world saying that Team Winx was ducking top-class competition.

Horse racing has a major problem, and this situation typifies it. We crave horses that turn into winning machines, ones that strut their stuff on a regular basis and leave no doubt about how good they are. However, when we get horses like that, we’re often very quick to tear them down.

I wrote at length about Wise Dan, who ran into this phenomenon when his connections opted to keep their turf buzzsaw on turf rather than try him on dirt. This is the same concept. Winx has mowed down all comers over the course of her 24-race win streak, including world-class horses like Highland Reel. Why can’t we simply appreciate her for what she’s doing and be glad that we’re seeing her do it?

In a bizarre twist, while some of us insist on this strange behavior, we also spend time building up horses that have lost. Zenyatta gained the most respect not for any of her victories, but in coming up short to Blame in her career finale. Many think Easy Goer was superior to Sunday Silence despite losing three out of four meetings with that rival. Heck, Bodemeister’s stud career was built not on his runaway win in the Arkansas Derby, but off of his LOSS in the Kentucky Derby.

To be fair, part of handicapping involves figuring out horses that can improve off of defeats, and ones coming off of wins that may be vulnerable. That’s part of the pursuit of value that every handicapper undertakes when dissecting a card. However, none of that has any bearing in assessing a horse’s accomplishments during that horse’s career.

Winx is great, and her bona fides are not lessened by her connections opting not to go to Royal Ascot. To those who hurled insults and think those connections owe anything to them beyond doing what they feel is best for their champion, shame on you. You’re pushing an ideology that results in no-win situations for the game, horses, and horsemen, one where champions somehow sully their reputations by not winning as authoritatively as fans think they should.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s take a look at Saturday’s Rainbow 6 sequence at Gulfstream. I’ll dissect the races involved, as well as offer a late Pick Four ticket that gives us a bit more coverage.

$0.20 Rainbow 6: Race #9

R9: 2,5,6,7,8
R10: 7
R11: 1,2,10
R12: 3,6,8,9,12
R13: 2,7,8
R14: 8

225 Bets, $45

If you’re going to play an economical ticket, I think you need at least two singles. I’ll take stands in the second and sixth legs, and hope that I’ve got enough coverage elsewhere.

The ninth is a maiden race going long on turf, and I wish I had the money to buy the race. I’m going five-deep, and while I’m using #7 ART COLLECTION (the 9/5 morning line favorite), I don’t think he’s any cinch, especially going to a cold barn. My top selection is actually #6 DAWOOD, who debuted going nine furlongs. That’s never an easy task, and rating well behind a slow pace certainly didn’t help. Dawood gets Luis Saez here, and he’s bred to be a good one. If he takes a step forward, he’s certainly good enough to win.

My first single comes in the 10th, an optional claiming event that’s drawn some classy horses. The one I really like is #7 READY FOR RYE, whose last race was too bad to be true. He’s shown plenty of ability, and if he’s back to his usual form, I think he’ll be tough to beat. He’s got enough tactical speed to sit close to the pace, and he may get first run turning for home beneath Jose Ortiz.

The third leg is the Grade 3 Honey Fox. #2 LULL and #10 ON LEAVE are both classy horses, but I also need to use #1 GLORY TO KITTEN, who has never lost over this turf course. She does take a step up in class, but I simply can’t throw a horse out that has never tasted defeat at Gulfstream.

The fourth leg is the Grade 2 Gulfstream Park Oaks, and I’m taking the stance that this race sets up for a closer. My top pick (and not just because I used to work with a part-owner; hi, Drew!) is #9 PRINCESS WARRIOR, who prepped for this race with an OK effort in the Grade 3 Herecomesthebride on turf. Her record looks much better if you draw a line through the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, and I think she’ll come rolling late.

The 13th is the Grade 2 Pan American, and I’m three-deep. #8 SADLER’S JOY will be favored, and I’m using him, but I hesitate to single a deep closer in spots like these. I’m also using #2 BULLARDS ALLEY and #7 BIGGER PICTURE, and I’m surprised the latter is 6-1 on the morning line. He won the Grade 1 United Nations last year, and while he’s got a strong closing kick, it helps that he can also sit fairly close to the pace.

We finish things off with the Grade 1 Florida Derby, and I’ll hope to cap things off with a single. #8 AUDIBLE ran really well in taking the Grade 2 Holy Bull, and a repeat effort would mean another horse likely has to take a big step forward to beat him. I think he’ll be very tough in here, and hopefully, he can get this ticket home.

$0.50 Pick Four: Race 11

R11: 1,2,3,10
R12: 3,5,6,8,9,12
R13: 2,3,7,8
R14: 8

96 Bets, $48

I’m still singling Audible to end this sequence, but I’ll add a few horses before that in hopes of getting to the payoff leg. I’ll throw in #3 STORMY VICTORIA in the 11th, #5 DAISY in the 12th, and #3 HI HAPPY in the 13th. If you’ve got the money to add these horses into the Rainbow 6, feel free. I wanted to keep the cost of that ticket down to a reasonable level, though, and this was the compromise I came up with.

Analyzing My 2018 Hall of Fame Ballot

Posted on by Andrew Champagne

A few years ago, I received one of the biggest honors in horse racing when given a ballot for the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. It’s a responsibility I don’t take lightly, especially in the wake of new induction protocols that could see waves of new honorees in the next few summers.

I’ve mailed my ballot back to Saratoga Springs, and it’ll be interesting to see vote totals when they get announced next month. I saw none of the 10 finalists as surefire inductees, and I wound up checking three names on my ballot. Below are my explanations, starting with the one I had the most conviction about.

1) BLIND LUCK

Far from a visually impressive equine specimen, Blind Luck began her career in a maiden claiming event at Calder. After her debut victory, she was privately purchased and moved to the care of Hall of Fame horseman Jerry Hollendorfer, for whom she would reel off 10 graded stakes victories, including six Grade 1 triumphs. She earned an Eclipse Award as 2010’s top 3-year-old filly, and she finished in the money in all but one of her 22 career starts.

Personal story: I was in attendance for the 2010 Alabama, and got to go into the paddock before the race thanks to a friend who had connections (one I now work with at DRF; hi, Craig!). I’ve been watching horse racing for most of my life, and I can safely say that I have NEVER seen a horse look worse before a race than Blind Luck did that day. She was washed out, showed positively no interest in being there, and looked nothing like a horse that had already taken down a pair of Grade 1 races that season.

Then, she went and did this.

2) HAVRE DE GRACE

Of course, we can’t talk about Blind Luck without mentioning her main rival, Havre de Grace, who’s also on the ballot. Unlike Blind Luck, who won Grade 1 races in three consecutive seasons, Havre de Grace is best known for one shining campaign that earned her Horse of the Year honors.

Yes, there are asterisks here. Her trophy came in 2011, a year where there was no standout older male. She did beat boys in that year’s Grade 1 Woodward, but with the exception of upper-tier stalwart Flat Out, there wasn’t much else in the race, and she was fourth behind Drosselmeyer in the Breeders’ Cup Classic two starts later. Furthermore, her peak was fairly short compared to other Hall of Famers, and in an age where top horses race fewer and fewer times, longevity may very well matter more come voting season.

I understand the logic there, but I don’t necessarily agree with some of it. Unpopular opinion coming: If the Hall of Fame isn’t meant for a horse that had one sterling season, who wants to be the one to tell those at Stonestreet that Rachel Alexandra’s being kicked out? I voted for her, but if we’re going off of the “she didn’t beat much and her peak wasn’t long” angle, certainly it applies to Rachel, right? She beat nothing in her Woodward triumph, and with all due respect to Summer Bird, the crop of 3-year-old males she dusted multiple times was one of the worst of the past 15 years.

Maybe Havre de Grace came along at a time of transition for the handicap division, but her stirring rivalry with Blind Luck certainly helps, and her win over future Hall of Famer Royal Delta in the 2011 Beldame puts her over the top.

3) HEAVENLY PRIZE

I went back and forth on Heavenly Prize multiple times over the course of my deliberations. Admittedly, I wasn’t overly familiar with the distaff division of the early-1990’s, and the lack of a Breeders’ Cup victory doesn’t help her cause.

However, the more I looked, the more I became won over by this mare. She never finished out of the money in 18 career starts, and of her nine wins, eight were of the Grade 1 variety. She ran against the likes of Inside Information, Paseana, and Serena’s Song, all legitimate Hall of Famers, and she didn’t discredit herself in her lone start against males, when she ran third to the great Cigar in the 1996 Donn Handicap.

A Breeders’ Cup victory would’ve made her a much easier choice. She was third in the 1993 Juvenile Fillies (just her third career start) and second in the Distaff in both 1994 and 1995. The first Distaff lost stings, as it came by a neck to 47-1 shot One Dreamer, but the second one is understandable, as Inside Information turned in one of the most freakish performances in North American racing history. With billing like that, I HAVE to show it, right?

I wasn’t sold on Heavenly Prize when ballots went out. However, eight Grade 1 wins, in an era where top-class mares seemed to grow on trees, is one heck of a total, even if none of those victories came in the Breeders’ Cup. Ultimately, I felt she’d done enough to merit inclusion, so she was the final checkmark before I sealed the envelope and sent it back east.

– – – – –

As far as the others are concerned, there were no hard omissions for me. I’ve discussed Gio Ponti’s resume at length, and while he might get in given the new standards for induction (50.1%, no maximum number of honorees), I couldn’t bring myself to vote for him. None of the jockeys struck me as Hall of Fame-worthy, although Corey Nakatani could convince me with a few more strong years given his nine Breeders’ Cup victories, which matter more to me than Robby Albarado’s 5,000-plus wins.

As far as the trainers are concerned, Mark Casse will likely get in in a few years. I couldn’t vote for him this time around, though. It’s the NATIONAL Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, and while his Canadian accomplishments are astounding, I just don’t think he’s done quite enough since coming to the U.S. One or two more big horses, though, will probably sway my vote.

Think I messed up? Have a question about the way I did things? Drop me a line. I read everything that comes in through this site, and I’m happy to discuss this further.

2017 Eclipse Awards: My Ballot, Explanations, and Abstentions

Posted on by Andrew Champagne

I was accepted into the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters a few months ago, and with that came my first-ever Eclipse Awards ballot. I’m sure there are some people out there who are shaking their heads that I have a vote (I can think of at least two), but the meaning of this process isn’t lost on me. It’s an honor to be able to cast a vote for horse racing’s most prestigious awards, and this post will serve as an explanation for how I voted.

I’ve broken the awards down into several categories, and horses and humans that earned second and third-place votes will be in parentheses after my chosen winner. Like every year, there were some divisions that were easier than others, and there were a few where I could completely understand differing viewpoints. As you’ll see, there were two divisions where I simply could not bring myself to cast a vote, and I’ll discuss why when we get there.

On with the ballot!

THE LOCKS

Horse of the Year: Gun Runner (World Approval, Forever Unbridled)

Three-Year-Old Filly: Abel Tasman (Unique Bella, Paradise Woods)

Older Dirt Male: Gun Runner (Arrogate, Roy H)

Older Dirt Female: Forever Unbridled (Stellar Wind, Songbird)

Male Sprinter: Roy H (El Deal, Drefong)

Male Turf Horse: World Approval (Talismanic, Beach Patrol)

Apprentice Jockey: Evin Roman (Hector Diaz, Katie Clawson)

Gun Runner assured himself multiple trophies when he won the Breeders’ Cup Classic to cap off a stellar campaign. Had Arrogate not turned in one of the most impressive performances in recent horse racing history in the Dubai World Cup, he’d have managed one of the most dominant campaigns by an older horse in the past 20 years.

I was probably more impressed with Roy H’s campaign than some of my fellow voters. Had Drefong not run erratically after throwing Mike Smith in the Bing Crosby, the eventual Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner probably wins that race, which would have given him an undefeated season with three Grade 1 victories (plus a Grade 2 score). I even debated putting him second above Arrogate in the Older Dirt Male category, but ultimately decided against it.

THE TWO-YEAR-OLDS

Two-Year-Old Male: Good Magic (Bolt d’Oro, Sporting Chance)

Two-Year-Old Female: Rushing Fall (Caledonia Road, Moonshine Memories)

Both of these are up for some debate. I spent considerable time mulling over my 2-year-old male vote, but ultimately went with the impressive winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. I understand Bolt d’Oro raced very wide most of the way, but even if he’d been closer to the rail, my opinion is that Good Magic was probably still best that day. I also wanted to give an honorable mention to Sporting Chance, the Grade 1 Hopeful winner that has not run since. That proved to be a very live race, and he won despite ducking out badly late. Hopefully, we get to see him step forward in 2018.

I felt much more comfortable with my 2-year-old female vote. Caledonia Road was impressive in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, but I honestly believe this crop of dirt fillies was not that special. Rushing Fall showcased a turn of foot we don’t often see, and there’s a real chance the field she beat in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf was better than the one Caledonia Road dispatched.

PICK YOUR POISON

Three-Year-Old Male: West Coast (Always Dreaming, Oscar Performance)

I’m about to make a pretty unpopular statement. Had West Coast not run a decent third in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, I would have likely abstained from this category. Once Oscar Performance faltered in two races against older horses late in the year, this came down to West Coast and Always Dreaming. The former won the Travers and Pennsylvania Derby emphatically, but skipped the Triple Crown races. The latter was brilliant at his best when winning the Florida and Kentucky Derbies, but head-scratchingly awful at his worst when nowhere in the Preakness and Travers.

Thankfully, West Coast finished in the same zip code as your likely Horse of the Year. In doing so, he did enough for me to be able to feel OK about casting my vote for him. Having said that, I’m a believer that there are some years, and some categories, where no horse is good enough to deserve an Eclipse Award. Keep this in mind later.

THE SENTIMENTAL CHOICE (BUT ALSO THE RIGHT ONE)

Female Turf Horse: Lady Eli (Wuheida, Off Limits)

There’ll be one heck of a Hall of Fame debate coming up in a few years with regard to Lady Eli. She won big races at ages two, three, four, and five, and not only survived laminitis, but came back to perform at racing’s highest level. This year, she won Grade 1 races on both coasts, which is not an easy thing to do.

This won’t be a unanimous vote. Lady Eli misfired badly in the Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf, a race in which she suffered an injury. Having said that, the winner of that race, Wuheida, raced just once in North America, and there isn’t nearly enough in the way of qualified other contenders for this award. To demonstrate that, Off Limits got my third-place vote despite having just one Grade 1 victory, which came in the Matriarch late in the year at Del Mar.

Even with the untimely dud, it’s tough to see any horse but Lady Eli winning this award. No other horse did enough to win it, and her story certainly doesn’t hurt. Should her story matter when it comes to Eclipse Awards and Hall of Fame consideration? That’s a question for another column.

TWO HUMAN AWARDS

Breeder: Clearsky (Besilu, WinStar)

Jockey: Jose Ortiz (Mike Smith, Irad Ortiz, Jr.)

Clearsky Farms bred Eclipse finalists Arrogate and Abel Tasman, as well as Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf runner-up Untamed Domain. That’s a heck of a resume right there, especially for a farm that’s fairly small in size, and I couldn’t look past it.

I went with Jose Ortiz over Mike Smith for a few reasons. Ortiz rode day-in and day-out for the entire year and established a consistent body of work few could match. Mike Smith had a phenomenal year, and he’s established a judicious strategy of picking mounts that extends his career deep into his 50’s. However, that judicious strategy works against him when compared to someone who takes very few days off. That being said, I wouldn’t be opposed to him passing along his map to the fountain of youth.

BOY, WAS I WRONG

Owner: Klaravich/Lawrence (Sol Kumin, Juddmonte)

Trainer: Todd Pletcher (Chad Brown, Bob Baffert)

My top pick for this year’s best owner didn’t even make the list of finalists, and neither did my chosen runner-up (more on him in the next paragraph). The finalists are Juddmonte, Godolphin, and Winchell/Three Chimneys, and more than any other category, this one got some scrutiny on Twitter when the finalists were announced.

One note on Kumin: We need new owners who have his apparent passion for the sport. He’s bought in on a lot of horses, and many have had success at the highest level. However, I couldn’t, in good conscience, vote him as the top owner in the country this year. It doesn’t sit well with me that we don’t exactly know how much of each horse he owns. Partnerships have their merits, sure, but if the situation is this murky, how can one partner be deemed more valuable than others who may be involved?

Pletcher wasn’t even a finalist. I understand why, but here’s my thinking. Pletcher won trainer’s titles at Gulfstream and Saratoga, and he also won two-thirds of the Triple Crown with Always Dreaming and Tapwrit. It hurts that his barn went fairly cold to end the year, but I thought what he did in the early part of the year made up for it.

BOY, YOU’LL THINK I’M WRONG

Steeplechase Horse: ABSTAIN

Like many of my fellow voters, I simply didn’t see enough jump races to be able to have an informed opinion. Rather than guess, I’ll leave this one to the experts.

Female Sprinter: ABSTAIN

(ducking the tomatoes and objects you’re throwing at me)

Time to explain the most controversial part of my ballot. I am not against honoring the top female sprinter in the country. However, I’m far from convinced we had a single top-tier runner in that division. Let’s run through the list, shall we?

Had the year ended in mid-August, Paulassilverlining would have been a solid choice. However, she misfired in both the Ballerina and the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint. A single in-the-money finish in either event probably would have made her the recipient of my vote, but I simply couldn’t vote for her given when the switch flipped and how big the difference in form was.

Similar can be said for Lady Aurelia. I know most of her campaign came outside the United States. Had she run well in the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint against males, though, it would have been difficult to vote against her. Given how much Paulassilverlining tailed off, she probably didn’t even have to win. However, for the first time in her career, she ran a clunker, and given her lack of American-based success, I couldn’t vote for her.

Unique Bella? She won the Grade 1 La Brea, but her only victory against older competition came in a Grade 3, she spent the early part of the year routing, and her dud on Breeders’ Cup day is a big strike against her. Bar of Gold? She did nothing besides a victory in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint, which proved to be a very oddly-run race. Finley’sluckycharm? Never won a Grade 1. American Gal? Didn’t run after the Test (which was a shame, because I think she may have secretly been the best 3-year-old filly in the country this year when healthy).

Please tell me, with a straight face, why I should have felt confident casting a vote for any of these horses. Simply put, I didn’t think any of the runners I mentioned put together a campaign from start to finish that merited an Eclipse Award in this category. I can’t praise Paulassilverlining’s early success without mentioning her late-season struggles. I can’t give Lady Aurelia a North American-based award when most of her success came in Europe. I can’t say Unique Bella is an elite sprinter when her lone sprints against older horses were an OK Grade 3 win and a dud in the division’s biggest race, and no other horse did enough to even merit consideration. Add all of this up, and you get an abstention from yours truly.

INTERLUDE: Charlottesville

Posted on by Andrew Champagne

WRITER’S NOTE: I grappled with the decision of whether or not to write this for most of Tuesday evening. I know, for a fact, that I’m going to get my fair share of “stick to sports” or “stick to horse racing” replies, and I’m at peace with that. However, after giving this an incredible amount of thought, there was no way I couldn’t say something. If you’re not interested in my thoughts on this matter, I completely respect and understand that. To make a long story short, though: This article is written because there’s a lot going on right now that’s more important than who I like in the third at Saratoga.

– – – – –

My great-uncle fought in World War II. He served in the Pacific and was wounded in the Battle of Saipan. Only lately has he been able to open up about it publicly (The Associated Press did an excellent piece on this in 2014 that you can read here if you’re so inclined).

Wilfred “Spike” Mailloux, who married my grandmother’s sister, is one of the greatest men I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting, and certainly a true American hero. He’s pushing 100 years old, and he’s recently been honored as the last surviving member of Company B, 105th Regiment, 27th Division. I’ve never asked him about his service, and I’ve learned much of what I know through the articles that were written about him within the past few years.

I feel it safe to assume, though, that Uncle Spike didn’t think we’d be fighting the same battles he fought in 1944 in 2017.

Of course, I’m referring to the incidents of domestic terrorism in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend. By now, you all know that in the midst of battles between white supremacists and counter-protesters, a 32-year-old woman died after she was mowed down by a car that also injured scores of others.

I won’t pretend to understand the ideologies of hate groups at home and abroad. I’m a digital media expert that doubles as a semi-professional horse racing handicapper, and I’ll leave those discussions and theories to people who are much, much more well-versed in that sort of thing than I am. I’m also not going to turn this into a political matter, which seems to be all the rage nowadays (for whatever it’s worth, since I’m well aware that people may speculate, I’m a political centrist who registered as a Republican back when that meant something MUCH different than what it means now, and I’ve got ideas that will scare people on both sides of the political spectrum to death).

Instead of all of that, which I believe would do zero good and make the horrible “signal-to-noise” ratio in this country even worse, I’m simply going to ask one question: When, in the name of everything holy, did it become OK for the President of the United States to defend Nazis in any way, shape, or form?

We’ve all seen the speeches, and I’m going to remove all emotion from this analysis for the sake of reporting the facts as they happened. Saturday night, after Heather Heyer was killed by a white supremacist, President Trump gave a vague statement criticizing hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides. If you thought he misspoke while uttering those last three words, he removed all doubt by saying them again, firmly and with so much conviction that a neo-Nazi website, The Daily Stormer, praised his comments.

Sunday, Donald Trump was quiet on Twitter while those around him condemned the attacks. Finally, on Monday, Trump broke his silence, but not until after several of the most influential figures in American business resigned from his American Manufacturing Council. While he had yet to make a clearer statement on the Charlottesville saga, he did not hesitate in calling out one of those businessmen, Ken Frazier of Merck Pharma, for what he called, in all-caps, “LOWER RIPOFF DRUG PRICES!”

Finally, at 1 p.m. Monday afternoon, nearly 48 hours after Heather Heyer was killed, Trump denounced white supremacists and Nazi organizations by name. It took 48 hours for the leader of the free world, one whose country dispatched a similar evil ideology seven decades earlier on the battlefields of Europe, to publicly condemn said ideology. Trump’s critics complained that it should not have taken this long for those remarks to be delivered and that those close to the president had already delivered comments in the same vein, while Team Trump complained about a lack of respect in the media (son Donald, Jr., complained about “moving goalposts”).

24 hours later, Trump’s comments took yet another turn, and more clearly resembled what he said Saturday. When behind the microphone at Trump Tower, he uttered the following statement.

“I think there is blame on both sides. You look at both sides. I think there is blame on both sides. You had a group on one side that was bad and a group on the other side that was very violent.”

And with that, here we are. Once again, please let me stress that none of what I have written in the previous five paragraphs was opinion-based. None of it is speculation. This is an actual timeline of an actual leader’s handling of an actual, national crisis. There was no spin, simply facts that we can all agree happened and that are backed up by videos and archived tweets.

Hate is not okay. This is a concept that we all learned in elementary school. Every American, regardless of race, creed, or color, has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Not every white American, not every Catholic American, and not every American that was born here, but every single resident of this country. This isn’t a high-brow political concept where there are many viewpoints that would be acceptable or valid. This is stuff we all learned in kindergarten, and it’s stuff that’s driven home as we grow up and realize that there’s a great, big world out there.

This leads to another fact, one that is damning and inescapably true: The man that was elected to lead the United States of America, and the man whose job it is to get us through times of crisis with a steady hand, attributed part of the blame for the situation in Charlottesville to people who were protesting white supremacists, possibly including the woman whose life was taken by a white supremacist who drove a car into a crowd of people with the intent to kill or injure.

This isn’t a partisan issue. This is a situation where the only acceptable response is that the belief of white supremacy is universally condemned, as is violence unleashed in the name of that cause. There are no sides, and there are no moral dilemmas involved, as evidenced by the considerable number of high-ranking Republican politicians (including Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, among others) who didn’t feel the need to wait to say or do the right things.

Now is when emotion comes into play.

President Trump, was Heather Heyer to blame for the situation that took her life? Would you knowingly approach her parents and talk about the “very nice people” who enabled the acts of violence we saw this past weekend? Do you sleep easier at night knowing that a portion of the people who assembled in Charlottesville to broadcast the perceived superiority of their race did so, and I’m quoting former KKK leader David Duke here, “to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump?”

I didn’t vote for Donald Trump. Like a surprising number of fellow registered Republicans, I cast a reluctant vote for Hillary Clinton. Despite many reservations, I believed that she was much better-suited to handle leading the country through crises, which had become exceedingly more common in the past few years given the world’s unstable political climate. When Donald Trump won the election nine months ago, I hoped that he was ready to handle an issue like the one that popped up a few days ago in Charlottesville. I hoped I was wrong about him.

I wasn’t wrong.

In closing, I present this take on the matter put forth by a former college roommate of mine. This is Chris Barriere, a sports reporter based in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and if I’ve addressed this situation half as eloquently as he did when opening one of his sportscasts, then I’ve done a heck of a job.

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