Flatter: Criticize quality of Belmont Stakes at your own risk

The moaning about next week’s Belmont Stakes can be heard from sea to shining sea.

“This is the Belmont’s worst field ever.”

That seems to be the drumbeat of the Twittersphere, where “-st” words and “ever” are seldom far apart – and often as wrong as can be. Ever, after all, is a long, damn time.

The sourpuss points of view that are dripping in cynicism are largely the result of the absence of horses widely regarded as the best 3-year-olds going these days. Or in this case, not going.

Epicenter, the favorite in the first two classics, will not be there. By the way, might he be the best 3-year-old male right now even though he finished second in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness? Discuss.

Early Voting was all about winning the Preakness. Team Klarachad never had any designs on sending him to Belmont Park. With this colt, Chad Brown is all about taking him home to Saratoga, interrupting a cookout in his back yard and winning the Travers.

The New York Racing Association understandably is building its Belmont hype around Rich Strike. Who saw that coming a month ago? His every move has been captured in photos and videos even before he arrived at Belmont Park in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. If the Baltimore Colts could slip out under the cover of darkness in 1984, Rich Strike could slip in in 2022. In vans, no less.

Got to give credit to NYRA. Using its Belmont Stakes account on Twitter, it built a fun tale of suspense with its social-media sentry standing by for Rich Strike’s van to arrive. All that were missing were Linus’s blanket and the Great Pumpkin. The NYRA cameras even caught the frisky colt taking a roll in the sawdust of his temporary barn on Long Island.

But Rich Strike skipped the Preakness, extending the Triple Crown drought to what will become five years in 2023. So back to this supposed anticlimax of a horse race next Saturday.

Of 11 current candidates who could be in the starting gate, six already have won stakes races. Two of them – Rich Strike and the filly Nest – have won Grade 1s.

All right, the last time there were so few stakes winners coming into the race was in 2019. And in 2018. And you have to go back to 2015, when American Pharoah scared off most everyone, to find the last time there were fewer horses with black-type wins in their past performances. That was when there were a whopping five.

It was not long before that when some wag in the press box the day after the Belmont cracked that the race was less about its brand as the Test of the Champion and more about being the Test of the N1X. OK, that wag might have looked a lot like me, but since I did not have anyplace to write that at the time, I told Jennie Rees she could use it in the Louisville Courier Journal. Now the Test of the “A Other Than” looks and sounds funnier, so I think I will go with that.

This is the era of athletes being asked to do less while they themselves get more money. Think about. Pampered starting pitchers, concussed football players, manageably unloaded basketball players and, yes, 3-year-old horses. When it comes to productivity, we are not exactly the greatest generation.

That being the case, résumés are a lot thinner now. It used to be that horses who came into the Belmont Stakes with 10 starts were considered lightly raced. If D. Wayne Lukas did that, the question would be raised. “What is he thinking?”

Now a horse with 10 starts at this point in his 3-year-old season is about ready for a summer on the farm. If D. Wayne Lukas did that, the question would be raised. “What is he thinking?”

If there are fewer races on a horse’s past performances, it stands to reason there are fewer opportunities to see stakes victories on those résumés. Just like it was only a matter of time before the curse of Apollo was going to be eradicated by an idle juvenile who graduated to wear the Kentucky Derby roses, so, too, is the likelihood of having a Belmont Stakes winner without a previous stakes victory.

So bring on Barber Road and Brigadier General and Creative Minister and Golden Glider and Skippylongstocking. While my money at this point is likely to be on We the People, does it seem so far-fetched that one of the other five might steal the race? Rich Strike was one of those “others” just a month ago, right?

For bettors, the naysaying about the Belmont simply means there may be more value for the rest of us who refuse to ignore the race, even if its 154 years of tradition continue to change its shape.

Consider this. With Derby winner Rich Strike (80-1) and Preakness victor Early Voting (5-1) setting the tone, we could have only the seventh year when all three classic winners went off at odds of at least 5-1.

That bit of research comes with this believe-it-or-not fact. The first six times all happened since 1996, and it has happened four times already since 2011. The last time was three years ago with Country House (65-1) in the Derby, War of Will (6-1) in the Preakness and Sir Winston (10-1) in the Belmont.

Pooh-pooh the quality of the field in the Belmont Stakes, if you must. Meanwhile, some of the rest of us try to seize on the quantity of the value.