IS GETTING ITS DRAFT BOARD READY
For now, there is more racing. Perhaps, the Belmont. Maybe a meeting with the brilliant, unbeaten mare Zenyatta.
"It's good for racing to have champions run against champions," Jackson said. "That's the heart of the theory. You raise the bar, take chances. I'm an entrepreneur. I take risks, but the rewards are worth it."
Two fillies that won the Derby, Genuine Risk (1980) and Winning Colors (1988), tried the Preakness, but could not win. Rachel did not try the Derby and won the Preakness.
"I saw [Rachel Alexandra] breezing at Churchill before the Oaks and I knew she was a superstar," said Musket Man's trainer, Derek Ryan. "My horse ran well, but we got beat by a great one. She's a filly for the ages."
If you are wondering if the filly could have won the Triple Crown, wonder no longer. She almost certainly was not going to get the chance. Her former owner was never going to run her against colts. Jackson, who bought her after the Oaks, said he would not have run in the Derby had he owned her then, calling the race a "cavalry charge."
"She took the heat and kept on going," Pioneerof the Nile's trainer, Bob Baffert, said of the filly.
Even though he said Rachel Alexandra was not as comfortable at Pimlico as she was at Churchill Downs, Borel had no doubts during the race.
"Turning for home I knew I was home free," he said.
The filly's new trainer, Steve Asmussen, allowed that he was under serious pressure. If she lost, he was going to be a convenient target.
So what was the trainer's contribution?
"We got the saddle to stay on her and got out of the way," he said.
So, how good is this filly? And what would happen if the Derby winner and Preakness winner met in the Belmont Stakes?
Borel, the only man to have ridden them both, is convinced he knows the answer to both questions.
"Mile-and-a-16th, mile-and-a-half, 2 miles, whatever, she is the best horse in the country," the hottest jockey in the country said.
The Preakness infield started to become a happening in 1973 when Secretariat came to Pimlico during his Triple Crown run. Due to the giant infield crowds, Preakness attendance had grown to more than 100,000 in recent years.
The infield was a ghost town Saturday. No longer could all those college students truck alcohol into the infield. They had to buy Pimlico's beer. They responded with a massive boycott. The total crowd went from 112,222 last year to 77,850.
The students were not missed at the betting windows. The handle on the Preakness card was $86.6 million, up 18 percent over last year's $73.5 million. A total of $61 million was bet on the Preakness as opposed to $47 million last year. *
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