What’s next? Belmont winner Arcangelo will to go Saratoga

Elmont, N.Y.

Amid the buzz of activity with photographers and reporters on a clear, 67-degree Sunday morning, Jena Antonucci paused to walk out from barn 6 at Belmont Park and say hello to a passing well-wisher.

“Congratulations,” Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey said, stopping his car on Man O’ War Avenue.

“Thank you so much,” Antonucci said, hugging her fellow Belmont Stakes victor.

Antonucci makes history, creates long-lasting memories.

McGaughey was one of many mentors who might not have known they were helping Antonucci become the first woman to train the winner of a Triple Crown race. It was an accomplishment that became a reality Saturday when Javier Castellano rode Arcangelo to victory in the Belmont.

“It’s watching Shug McGaughey, it’s watching Todd (Pletcher), it’s watching Chad (Brown),” Antonucci said. “My first introduction to Thoroughbreds was under Wayne Lukas’s program at the farm and the attention to detail that was there, and you carry that through. It’s why details matter. It’s just trying to live it through.”

Being detail-oriented was what attracted owner Jon Ebbert to hire Antonucci, whom he met the day after he bought Arcangelo nearly two years ago. The details of the morning after a big race included making sure the 3-year-old ridgling by Arrogate looked fit. Antonucci said he did and that Arcangelo would be shipped to Saratoga this week. She also said it was too soon to know when he would race next.

“We have no answers yet,” she said. “We’re going to let him get out of this race, get comfortable, be happy. I mean he ran his eyeballs out yesterday. We finally saw him get tired for the first time.”

The Jim Dandy (G2) on July 29 and the Travers (G1) on Aug. 26, both at Saratoga, present themselves as lures. Antonucci stopped short of mentioning those races, but she did acknowledge those dates when she was asked if Arcangelo would have a busy summer.

“We’ll see,” she said. “And I’m not being coy. We’re going to be as detail-oriented in our processes and our decision making as we have been. If seven weeks makes sense, great. If 11 weeks makes sense, great. If one of them makes sense, not both, great. So we’ll tune out the white noise and let him tell us when and where.”

Arcangelo became racing’s newest millionaire Saturday. The $900,000 in first-place money from the Belmont ran his career earnings to $1,067,400 from a record of 5: 3-1-0. That amounts to a quick dividend for a horse who cost Ebbert only $35,000 at the Keeneland yearling sale in September 2021. After winning the Peter Pan (G3) last month, it actually cost him more at $50,000 to supplement Arcangelo into the Belmont. For $85,000 to turn into more than a million bucks made the son of the late Arrogate who was out of the Tapit mare Modeling quite a bargain.

“It was a hump year for the stallion,” Antonucci said. “He was the sum of a lot of parts at that age. Rangy, growthy, all the things we’d given him all the time for was what he was then. In the yearling market, a lot of times, people aren’t super patient, and they want something that looks like it’s going to come together as a 2-year-old. He wasn’t ever meant to be an early 2-year-old. That’s why he needed all this time to get himself mentally and physically there and get all those parts together.”

In short, he was not the prettiest baby in the meadow. It would take him a couple years to grow into himself.

“His legs aren’t tied on crooked, and he’s not a big pretzel,” Antonucci said. “He was just the sum of a lot of immature parts.”

After he was walked around and photographed Sunday morning, and then as he was being talked about and celebrated and fussed over, Arcangelo was a placid vision in his dark gray coat, standing in his stall behind the barn gap where Antonucci was speaking.

“He’s not perfect,” Antonucci said. “But he’s perfect to us.”