Flatter: Travers is becoming just as important as Triple Crown

With everything that has gone wrong at Saratoga this summer, neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor gloom of social media shall stay the Travers from the swift completion of its appointed renewal.

It is only August, a month I have been wanting to stamp out since I landed in an emergency room only minutes after July ended in 1977. Whether we call it Aug. 26 or July 57, it is still relatively early in 2023. Yet I have no hesitation in declaring this renewal of the Travers the race of the year. So far.

The argument may be made that one of the four Grade 1s on the Saratoga undercard Saturday will eclipse the Travers. For marquee value coming in, though, the mid-summer derby that is actually more than two-thirds of the way to the next equinox looks as delicious as the menu at Osteria Danny.

The good news is that this should not be the last time.

It has been said plenty that this will be the first Travers since 2017 that includes three winners of the Triple Crown races. And only the fourth ever in 154 years. It says here we might want to happily get used to it.

This is the era of load management in basketball. Of complete games being pitched maybe once a week in baseball. And of horses racing less and less often, barely six times a year according to The Jockey Club.

The seven entrants in Saturday’s Travers have a combined 43 starts in the past 12 months, or barely six per horse, just like the continental average. Think about what trainers do to get to a half-dozen starts into their top colts by now. One or two as a 2-year-old. A couple preps as 3-year-olds. The Kentucky Derby. Maybe the Preakness or Belmont but not both. Perhaps an early summer stakes. Then the Travers.

For horses on the way to the Breeders’ Cup, the Travers used to be just another stop along the trail. Now, with so few races on each horse’s résumé, it is the target. Pronounce “the” with a long e.

“It’s positioned where it’s always been,” said Hall of Fame trainer Todd Pletcher, the two-time Travers winner who will saddle Forte and Tapit Trice on Saturday. “After you complete the Triple Crown races, whichever ones you decide to run in, then most of the top colts are going to begin to focus on the Travers. How they’re going to get there, and whether or not they’re going to have a prep in between, and if that prep is going to be in the Haskell or the Jim Dandy or what have you, it’s a pretty straightforward target, really.”

Please note that Pletcher declared the Haskell to be a prep for the Travers. That did not go down well on the shore when Gustavo Delgado, the trainer of Derby winner Mage, said the same thing in a quote gleefully promulgated by the New York Racing Association. I doubt that Florida Derby and Blue Grass Stakes acolytes bristled when their million-dollar races were declared by Churchill Downs to be preps for the Kentucky Derby. Jersey skin needs to get a little thicker.

Even The Stronach Group’s latest in a long line of trial balloons, this one to push the Preakness to late May, could enhance the Travers position as a compulsory stop on the tour of the ever more lightly raced, elite 3-year-old.

“It’s positioned well so that the horses that have been through the Triple Crown campaign have the opportunity to freshen up a little bit and come into peak form, hopefully,” Pletcher said.

Derby. Travers. Breeders’ Cup. Auction. They have become the four seasons of 3-year-olds. The 2017 and 2023 Travers may be exceptions to the last 40 years of history just like Justify and Mage have been the anomalous Kentucky Derby winners who did not race at age 2. But does it really seem like these two trends are destined to remain rarities anymore.

It has been said often this week that the first three times the Travers had three classic winners in its field, in 1918, 1982 and 2017, those nine horses lost. The morning line this year says Mage, National Treasure and Arcangelo are expected by bettors to follow that pattern behind Forte. Again, a little common sense says that should not come as a surprise. 

If there were a dominant 3-year-old in any given year, he would have won two or maybe all three classics. That is why it was a far bigger deal when American Pharoah, who singlehoofedly carried the Triple Crown into the Travers, lost to Keen Ice in 2015.

It may end up being a five-year quirk, but the last 16 classics have had 16 different winners. It is the longest such streak of inconsistency since there were 20 different horses earning those trophies between 1923 and 1930. Put it this way. There is no American Pharoah walking through that starting gate to scare off would-be Travers starters this weekend.

Ultimately this is not so much about the sport of kings as it is the value of the stallion. Minimize the risk of injury, build an impressive résumé as efficiently as possible, and get to a Lexington, Ky., sales ring before Thanksgiving. Lather, rinse, repeat.

With each Grade 1 victory, a stallion’s value rises with both the fall of the auction gavel and the standing and nursing of each foal. That price rises even more with wins in the Kentucky Derby and the Breeders’ Cup. Who is to say a Travers victory should not command such a premium?

The Travers may not be the Preakness or the Belmont Stakes right now, but the cachet of each of these races is not chiseled in marble. History tells us that. Old history. The Triple Crown was not some sudden invention concocted in a room full of whisky, cigars and a roomful of old, white aristocrats. It was not sudden at all.

Like so many traditions, the Triple Crown is a lingering contrivance. The knitting of the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes, not necessarily in that order, came together organically between World War I and the Great Depression.

Conversely, like so many other traditions such as political collegiality, courteous driving and Pac-12 football, the fabric of the Triple Crown can unravel over time. This is not to suggest we are witnessing that. It is to say we might not know if we are.

All the while, it is a safe bet the Travers will not just survive but thrive. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Why not? If that saying can stand the test of more than 1 1/2 centuries of time, so can a mid-summer derby near the end of summer.