The Inside Rail - From author of a book on Barbaro

Take That

Three weeks ago, Todd Pletcher watched himself. He stood with his arms folded in the Pimlico paddock, looking through the glass windows and down the long clubhouse, at a lone television.

There he was talking on ESPN. Talking about the Triple Crown. The Triple Crown that had kicked him around through years of disappointment. The interview seemed to last forever.

"Man, how long can you talk about a 0 for 26?" Pletcher asked rhetorically. Pletcher's wife laughed, a reporter laughed and Pletcher tried to laugh.

Moments later, Pletcher sent out Circular Quay and King Of The Roxy who made no impact on the second leg of the Triple Crown and made Pletcher's stat box read 0 for 28.

Then came the filly. Rags To Riches put the lid on Pletcher's Triple Crown trash can and rolled it to the curb. Long gone, now, off to the landfill of overused editorial angles, never to be seen from again.

In a race that seemed to lack definition, Rags To Riches made it a race for the ages; stumbling at the start and then sweeping wide on the far turn while Preakness winner Curlin cruised to contention. John Velazquez gunned Rags To Riches to a short lead, a head lock of a lead on Curlin that she would not relinquish through the last quarter of a mile.

The 46,870 at Belmont Park could not have rocked the old girl more than when Rags To Riches and Curlin hooked up. Without a Triple Crown on the line, the Belmont can tend to fade out, rather than stamp out, but this wasn't Jazil, it wasn't Editor's Note, it wasn't Commendable. If you dreamed it out on paper, you couldn't have gotten much closer.   

As she galloped out, the neophyte fan next to me, tie skewed, sweat rolling down his face, grabbed me by the shoulders.

"That was for Ruffian," he said.

Hey, let em go for a moment. 

The writer in me took off down the stairs of the clubhouse box seat area and bounded to the racetrack, filing in right behind a jubilant Todd Pletcher, who hugged Coolmore's Demi O'Byrne, assistant Tristan Barry, jock's agent and friend Angel Cordero, then Pletcher succinctly explained the filly-against-the-colts decision.

"The Mother Goose? The Belmont?" Pletcher said, using his hands as a balance. "The Mother Goose? The Belmont?"

Clearly, the Belmont.

Loren Robson, who's been galloping Rags To Riches since April, knew it all along

"She has so much temper in her stall," Robson said, as she helped lead the filly to the test barn, "I was hoping she'd put it to good use."

Curlin knows all about it.

Last Stop

The train is about to sound its last whistle at its last stop - the Belmont Stakes and it's long, draining 1 1/2-mile dinosour of a test to decide . . . nothing really. Without a Triple Crown on the line, without a grudge match between Derby and Preakness winners, yeah, it's a million dollar race to cap off another roiling trip down the Triple Crown Trail.

Seems like a long time ago when Notional, Scat Daddy, Stormello and all the others made the "Who's Hot" list. Now, it's down to Curlin, Hard Spun, Rags To Riches and a few others still scratching at the door to cap off a sometimes scintilating, sometimes dull run through the 3-year-old classics.

Guess, it's time to quit lamenting what could have been and go for a day at the track. Time to crack open a beer, ketchup up a hot dog and open up the Form. I'll be signing books from 12 to 2 and then enjoying a day at the races.

Handicappers

My dad calls me yesterday. We only talk horses.

"Who do you like in the Belmont?" Dad asks.

I stop and think about the Belmont as a betting contest for the first time.

"Whew, hard to go against Street Sense and Curlin . . . did I just say Street Sense?"

"Yeah."

"Well then, I guess it's hard to go against Curlin. After that, maybe Tiago," I say.

"What about the filly?"

"She's nice, she could run well, should like the distance, just a matter of how much those two races took out of Street Sense . . . damn, I did it again, I mean Curlin and Hard Spun," I say. "I remember Pletcher saying to me at Keeneland, 'I like to keep it simple, I'd rather be 6-5 in a grade three than 5-1 in a grade one.' "

"So, what's that mean?" Dad asks.

"Not sure," I say.

"You're a lot of help," Dad says and hangs up the phone. 

Ah, I Remember

"Do you want to jump a hurdle?" asked trainer Richard Valentine.

"Yeah, sure."

Old jump jockeys can't say no.

Nine hurdles later, blood pumping, chilled, knuckles achingly tight, I feel like coming back. My first hurdle for about five years. Westbound Road toted me up over nine hurdles that run along the top of a long, rolling hill between Middleburg and The Plains. At the top of the hill, they call it a mountain here, you can see for as far as you can see. Wow. Red-tailed hawk watched from a nearby timber fence, fox cub sprinted for the woods, momma fox moused down the way. And I remember why I ever loved this sport, the sheer energy and speed of a horse rolling down to fences effortlessly and emphatically.

It's a free day from here on in. Need to borrow money? Here you go. Audited? No problem. Car broke down? I'll walk.

See you at Belmont, I might be the one on a horse.

Another World

We loaded up our Thoroughbred Retirement associate members (remember Blue, Border and Kiss?) and ventured to the Upperville Horse Show in Upperville, Va., a long, long way from the Triple Crown. Old school - we're boarding at a 500-acre spread off of Rokeby Road, adjacent to the tree-lined showgrounds, a farm where they tell me Ruby Slippers was bred. The Blue Ridge Mountains take up one horizon, miles and miles of stone walls spider web over the hills, Paul Mellon's land rolls and rolls in the other direction.

We dropped off Blue at another boarding farm, hoping he'll ditch his weaving habit at the Pennsylvania border and put on, say, 400 pounds while he's here. He's doing better but still doesn't recognize the good life. He's listed as LTP - long term project - at the moment.

As for the other two, Border made his first horse show appearance today while Kiss made his third. Thoroughbreds, the lost boys of the show world. Olympic Gold Medalist, Joe Fargis, looked at the dainty and athletic Kiss and the long and tall Border and smiled.

"What do you think, Joe? Do you like their types?" my wife Anne asked.

"I love their types, they're Thoroughbreds, I haven't seen a Thoroughbred all year," said Fargis, who rode the Thoroughbred Touch Of Class to the Olympic Gold Medal in Los Angeles, but now makes his living riding Warmbloods imported from Europe.

Fargis gave Kiss and Anne a lesson yesterday while Border and I watched. Warmbloods went right, left and through while the two Thoroughbreds tried to adjust to life off the racetrack. Kiss jumps round and likes his job, Border hacks like he's on the Appalachian Trail. Is there a place for them in the show world?

We're trying to get Kiss ready to do the Thoroughbred-Only class tomorrow afternoon at Upperville. Thoroughbred-Only, so sad. They used to win gold medals, now they're reduced to a novelty with a special class.

I admire all the Thoroughbred retirement programs, but until we take better care of our horses and recreate a place for our horses, we're going to be stuck salvaging the dregs of what's left over from a sport that spits out horses. We're acting as a net at the bottom of a flawed system instead of caretakers in a webb of opportunity.