Flatter: Can a Kentucky Derby winner please win again?
What does it say about the Kentucky Derby that most of its heroes in the last decade seldom get back to the winner’s circle?
What does it say that Mystik Dan will be a pari-mutuel underdog for the fifth race in a row when he starts Saturday in the Grade 3, $275,000 Blame Stakes, his first start at Churchill Downs since his great 18-1 triumph last May?
Head to Head: 2 opinions, 2 win picks for the Blame.
Raise your hand if you think Mystik Dan and Mage and Rich Strike and Country House and Always Dreaming and Nyquist all were flukes. Some, yes. All of them, no.
Raise your hand if you think this recent record is less an indictment of the Derby itself and more a testament to how grueling it is for young horses to be prepped for a race longer than they ever have run against more horses than they ever have seen. Now we are on to something.
To use a term promulgated by a comedian who presumably hates horse racing, new rule. To make sure Kentucky Derby winners have a fighting chance to finish first again sometime in their careers, let’s spread their prep races further apart. It can go along with that idea of making the Triple Crown last longer than the never-ending NBA and NHL playoffs.
Or new rule. Don’t let Derby winners face older horses until they have finished first against 3-year-olds. If they turn 4 and still have not won again, run them against 3-year-olds until they do.
Seriously, folks. We need no new rules, silly or otherwise. One size does not fit all. American Pharoah had eight races in a little more than seven months, winning all but one of them. He was hickory. In the case of Mystik Dan, he was tired after racing six times between January and June. He got a 6 1/2-month break while his trainer second-guessed himself.
“If I could have a do-over, I wouldn’t have gone (to the Preakness) last year,” Kenny McPeek said this month on the Tony Kornheiser Show podcast. “I think it was a mistake on my part. I wished I could have done it over, because it took a long time to get him back. He actually had a great race (May 3), but if I had skipped the Preakness, would my horse have been fresher and stronger and maybe not taken as much steam out of him for later in the year? I believe (so).”
Mystik Dan is one particular case. The reasons so few recent Derby winners repeat anywhere else may be uniquely individual. Collectively, though, our most celebrated division of colts has reached the horse latitudes. The Belmont Stakes* faces its sixth consecutive non-COVID renewal without a live Triple Crown possibility. That is the longest such stretch since the Derby and Preakness winners were different every year after Sunday Silence in 1989 and before Silver Charm in 1996.
If not for the new smell of old Saratoga, the Belmont* would be an afterthought even for the few, the proud, the degenerate outside New York. Without a Triple Crown on the line, those Spa gables only go so far to attract a TV audience, even with no NBA or Stanley Cup finals scheduled next Saturday. The race might outdraw French Open tennis and Canadian Open golf, but it will not be a blowout, and it certainly is not a lock.
Sovereignty and Journalism carry with them the chance to end the Triple Crown’s longest drought since 1919 without a repeat winner within the series. There have been 21 different victors in the last 21 classics. If Sovereignty were to be draped with the white carnations at the Belmont*, he would be the first horse since Authentic in 2020 to win a race while recognized at the time as the Derby winner.
That is unless Mystik Dan gets there first.
“His first couple of races were a little lackluster,” his jockey Brian Hernandez Jr. said on my podcast this week in reference to distant, Grade 1 losses during the winter in the Malibu and the Pegasus World Cup Invitational. “But he rebounded real nicely over there in Arkansas. It was actually Derby day. He ran a really, really good second to Saudi Crown (in the Lake Ouachita Stakes). I’m looking at the Form right now, and he ran one of the top Beyers that he’s ever run before.”
It was a 101, according to Daily Racing Form, tied with last year’s Southwest Stakes (G3) for the best of Mystik Dan’s career. Whether that portends a victory this weekend against the likes of Post Time and Most Wanted remains to be seen. And to be bet.
“It looks like he got a good race in himself last time,” Hernandez said. “Hopefully he got a little confidence in him.”
If Mystik Dan can pull off the upset Saturday, and if Sovereignty wins next weekend in the Belmont*, then all this hand-wringing about the curse of Derby rose petals can be flushed away like a bad meal and the Carolina Hurricanes.
*Oh, yes. The footnote. It is only 1 1/4 miles again this year. C’mon.
Ron Flatter’s column appears Friday mornings at Horse Racing Nation. Comments below and at RonFlatterRacingPod@gmail.com are welcomed, encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday.