Flatter: Anger over Sovereignty’s snub of Triple Crown boils over

I am guilty of being three or four or most of five weeks late to having it all sink in. How the possibility of a Triple Crown was pulled out from under our feet when Bill Mott and Godolphin decided the party was over.

As flippant of an asterisk as I can be in referencing these Belmont Stakes*, which are 83% of what they should be while they are at Saratoga, Sovereignty brings in a far lighter load than he should Saturday.

Footnotes be damned. We were robbed of the opportunity to even debate the issue of a shorter Belmont* as a Triple Crown ingredient when Mott and Godolphin decided not to wait until moms in the neighborhood called us to dinner. It was not even 4 o’clock when they took their ball and bat home.

I did not jump up and down about it at the time. I should have. I made myself a victim of my own cynicism. I wrote off Sovereignty’s RSVP of regrets to the Maryland Jockey Club as nothing surprising from Mott or Godolphin, who handle their 10-foot poles with professional aplomb in avoiding the Preakness.

This banal, business-as-usual veneer I put around myself started to crack with each interview I did in the past month with mainstream sports media. If I could not screw up much righteous indignation about this game that I cover full-time, who was I to let some drive-by pundits get worked up? Disappointed but not surprised turned into my crutch answer.

What finally put me over the edge was something that hit me upside the head harder than Steve Asmussen’s declaration that Umberto Rispoli rode Journalism “like a rented mule” in winning the Preakness. It came last week when Mott told Daily Racing Form’s David Grening, “There was no reason physically why we couldn’t have run in the Preakness. We had no excuse other than we didn’t feel like it.”

Finally, I got pissed off. “We didn’t feel like it”? My word. When Queen Elizabeth II died nearly three years ago to make him the new monarch, Charles did not tell the Garter King of Arms, “I didn’t feel like it.”

I am a staunch advocate for individualism. Sovereignty’s race schedule does not have to be the product of some cookie cutter between now and the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Except for one thing. He won the damned Kentucky Derby. That changed everything.

Waiting only three days to declare there would be no Triple Crown attempt this year was like showing up to someone’s house for dinner without bringing a bottle of wine. Actually it was worse. It was like showing up at that house as the guest of honor and then getting a text that there was another party somewhere else, so it was hors d’oeuvres and a quick farewell.

Tony Kornheiser was joking only slightly in 2020 when COVID hit the sports world between the eyes with a 2-by-4. He matter-of-factly said NBA commissioner Adam Silver decreed an end to worldwide sports indefinitely. It was a similar overreach of authority that team Sovereignty pulled with the Triple Crown of 2025.

This is not about whether the Kentucky Derby and Preakness and Belmont Stakes should be spread further apart. The schedule is what it is right now. And this is not about whether this would be good for racing. Last time I checked, American Pharoah and Justify did not save the sport.

This is about respecting your elders. Now 106 years on from when it was first won by Sir Barton, the Triple Crown is a long-established, holy grail. Genuflect when you read that. That should go for the whole racing industry. Since Sovereignty was healthy, Mott and Godolphin should have felt like taking him to the Preakness.

Belmont Stakes* 2025 feels to me like the rematch of a mammoth boxing match that had a controversial split decision. It was not enough that those two ringside tickets cost $10,000. Let me check my common sense at the door and double down just so the promoters can benefit from another money grab for 12 more rounds that will look a lot like the first 12 rounds.

This renewal of the Belmont* is being billed as the race of the year. Never mind that they raced 1 1/4 miles for $5 million last month in what annually is the race of the year. Or that they will race 1 1/4 miles for $1.25 million in 2 1/2 months on the very same track where they will go at it for $2 million Saturday. On its own merit, the race may be just fine. In the annals of the Triple Crown, the Belmont* is doubly flawed this year.

We have been down this road before, kind of.

Justine Henin was a finalist in all the tennis majors in 2006. I was there in Melbourne when she played Amélie Mauresmo for the championship of the Australian Open. After losing the first set and going down a quick service break in the second, Henin walked up to the chair umpire and said no más. I guess she actually might have said pas plus.

“My energy was very low and my stomach painful,” she said at a tense news conference afterward.

Tense, because the late, great tennis writer Bud Collins grilled her like, well, like a rented mule.

“What would you say to all the people who paid hundreds of dollars to be here?” he asked.

“When you see it’s not working, it’s the only way to go out,” Henin said. “There was no reason to keep playing.”

In essence, Henin didn’t feel like it.

Henin quit on Mauresmo. Roberto Durán quit on Sugar Ray Leonard in their 1980 fight at the Superdome. And Mott and Godolphin quit on the Triple Crown.

To boil all this down to how this applies to this Belmont*, it would not surprise me to hear more than a smattering of boos if Sovereignty wins Saturday.

“If there ever would have been a horse you could have tried the Triple Crown with, he might have been it,” Mott told DRF. “Big. Sturdy. Came out good.”

Hey, Raj and Howard said the same thing when they carried their blustery swagger into bars on “The Big Bang Theory” only to pass on every opportunity to say hello to a woman.

What might have been.

It doesn’t really matter, though. Baeza is going to win Saturday. When it comes to betting on him, I will not be late.

Ron Flatter’s column returns July 4, appearing Friday mornings at Horse Racing Nation. Comments below are welcomed, encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday.