Nyquist wins Kentucky Derby

[Jaimito]

Not usually a fan of hose racing, but this horse was named after Red Wings player, the owner is a Red Wings fan, and a Canadian.

The horse got to nibble at the Stanley Cup prior to the run.

 

The jockey was the same guy who rode I'll Have Another a few years ago, and he did some training in PNE.

 

 

 

 

http://www.tsn.ca/favourite-nyquist-wins-kentucky-derby-1.485712

 

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The racing world wondered if there was a worthy successor to last year's Triple Crown champion American Pharoah.

Enter Nyquist.

The bay colt who lacks any distinctive markings won the Kentucky Derby by 1 1/4 lengths on Saturday, improving to 8-0 in his career as the fourth consecutive favourite to win the race.

Ridden by Mario Gutierrez, Nyquist ran 1 1/4 miles in 2:01.31. The 3-year-old colt became the eighth unbeaten winner in the race's 142-year history, and the first since Big Brown in 2008. He paid $6.60, $4.80 and $3.60 as the 2-1 favourite in the full field of 20 horses.

"We got a beautiful trip from the start to the end," Gutierrez said.

Nyquist delivered a second Derby win for Gutierrez, trainer Doug O'Neill and Canadian owner J. Paul Reddam, of Windsor, Ont. The Southern California-based team was behind 2012 Derby and Preakness winner I'll Have Another.

"This is such a special horse," O'Neill said. "You can see it in his eye on a daily basis and he's such a professional. Any human sport, he'd be the top-notch athlete. He's just first class."

Nyquist enjoyed a perfect trip over the Churchill Downs dirt in front of 167,227, the second-largest crowd in Derby history. The colt broke well out of the 13th post and showed some early speed getting away from the gate. Gutierrez eased Nyquist back to let speedster Danzing Candy take the lead going into the chaotic first turn.

"His run was awesome," Reddam said. "Obviously, we were going to take it to 'em. I love the way that we fired out of there and he sat behind Danzing Candy. This horse, he's really something. We're just really lucky to be a part of that."

Nyquist stayed just off the lead and Gutierrez kept him in the clear, steering him to the outside on the final turn. Nyquist and Gun Runner overtook tiring leader Danzing Candy at the top of the stretch.

"I thought I had it for a minute," said Florent Geroux, aboard Gun Runner. "He started pricking his ears back and forth at the top of the stretch."

But Gun Runner was only in front briefly before Nyquist showed a strong finishing kick. He put away his closest rival and sped to the finish line, with Exaggerator closing but never threatening after coming from well back.

Exaggerator fell to 0-4 against Nyquist, including two runner-up finishes under the brother team of trainer Keith and jockey Kent Desormeaux.

"What a horse," marvelled Keith Desormeaux. "I can't respect that horse enough."

All week long, optimism had filled the air in O'Neill's barn. The humans took their cues from the horse. Nyquist settled right in, showing an obvious liking for his surroundings.

"You just felt there was no way you could be nervous because you just felt like you were going in the gym with Kobe Bryant," O'Neill said. "You just knew he was going to figure out a way to pull it out at the end and he did. Mario gets a lot of credit, too. What a ride, what a ride."

Nyquist began Derby day with a visit from the Stanley Cup, which he playfully took a nibble at. Fitting, since he's named for Detroit Red Wings player Gustav Nyquist. Reddam is a fan of the NHL team and O'Neill was born in Michigan.

The bay colt is from the first crop of sire Uncle Mo, who never got the chance to run in the Derby after being the early favourite for the 2011 race. He was scratched the day before with a stomach illness. Uncle Mo had two other offspring in this year's race: Mo Tom and Outwork.

"Congratulations to Nyquist, he's still undefeated," said Kiaran McLaughlin, who trains Mohaymen. "He's a star. I don't know about the Triple Crown, but we'll have a great year."

Exaggerator returned $5.40 and $4.20, while Gun Runner was another 3 1/4 lengths back in third and paid $6 to show.

Mohaymen finished fourth and Suddenbreakingnews was fifth.

Destin was sixth, followed by Brody's Cause, Mo Tom, Lani and Mor Spirit, trained by Bob Baffert, who guided American Pharoah last year. My Man Sam was 11th, followed by Tom's Ready, Creator, Outwork, Danzing Candy, Trojan Nation, Oscar Nominated, Majesto and Whitmore. Shagaf didn't finish.

American Pharoah became racing's first Triple Crown champion in 37 years. The sport has had only one pair of back-to-back Triple Crown winners, Seattle Slew in 1977 and Affirmed in 1978.

Now Nyquist is the only horse in position to replicate the feat.

 

[-DLC-]

The jockey ("Super Mario" Gutierrez) didn't just train here....he was the top jockey at Hastings for some time...I've watched him ride since he was 19.  He calls Vancouver/Hastings "home" and a gives a lot of credit to those who took him under their wings here.  When he arrived here he didn't speak a word of English but was quickly considered part of the Hastings "family".  His wife's from Vancouver.

 

He comes back here and races on occasion to help boost things because the track's future is questionable. 

 

The picture below was one I took the last time he was here...he's a super humble, very nice person.  And it's awesome to see him continuing along his successful path.

 

I watched at Hastings on the big screen with people he raced with...we knew when he was sitting in third, stalking on the outside, that it was his.  Have seen him win a few like that.  So thrilled for him...he truly deserves this success.  He's worked very hard for it.

 

 

[Neversummer]

If he was a Wings fan, why Nyquist and not Lidstrom?

[Jaimito]

10 minutes ago, Neversummer said:

If he was a Wings fan, why Nyquist and not Lidstrom?

Maybe because Lidstrom retired already.

 

I recall they got the Empire State building to lit up in Gutierrez's purple livery, when he won the first two races of Triple Crown.  I was planning to go to Belmont, but when I heard he pulled the horse out of the race, I didn't go.

 

[Ghostsof1915]

That smile, makes you wonder if the horse is a hockey fan.

[Ghostsof1915]

20 minutes ago, debluvscanucks said:

The jockey ("Super Mario" Gutierrez) didn't just train here....he was the top jockey at Hastings for some time...I've watched him ride since he was 19.  He calls Vancouver/Hastings "home" and a gives a lot of credit to those who took him under their wings here.  When he arrived here he didn't speak a word of English but was quickly considered part of the Hastings "family".  His wife's from Vancouver.

 

He comes back here and races on occasion to help boost things because the track's future is questionable. 

 

The picture below was one I took the last time he was here...he's a super humble, very nice person.  And it's awesome to see him continuing along his successful path.

 

I watched at Hastings on the big screen with people he raced with...we knew when he was sitting in third, stalking on the outside, that it was his.  Have seen him win a few like that.  So thrilled for him...he truly deserves this success.  He's worked very hard for it.

 

 

Great to see Jockey's from Hastings that can win on the big stage! Way to go Mario!

[Neversummer]

42 minutes ago, Jaimito said:

Maybe because Lidstrom retired already.

Then maybe Datsyuk?

[CaptainCanuck001]

Nyquist will win the triple crown this year, IF he stays healthy. None of the other horses are in his class. 

[Baer.]

1 hour ago, Neversummer said:

Then maybe Datsyuk?

That's better?

[87Crosby]

2 hours ago, Neversummer said:

If he was a Wings fan, why Nyquist and not Lidstrom?

He has more than 1 horse. He has a Datsyuk, Tatar, Mrazek and a Kronwall from what I read this morning. 

[Neversummer]

11 minutes ago, 87Crosby said:

He has more than 1 horse. He has a Datsyuk, Tatar, Mrazek and a Kronwall from what I read this morning. 

Wow ... that's hardcore.  Next colt born will be Larkin then!

[Ghostsof1915]

5 hours ago, Neversummer said:

Wow ... that's hardcore.  Next colt born will be Larkin then!

Doubt it will be as cute.

 

Save to Delicious

[RUPERTKBD]

7 hours ago, 87Crosby said:

He has more than 1 horse. He has a Datsyuk, Tatar, Mrazek and a Kronwall from what I read this morning. 

Interesting that all his horses are named after Euros....

 

...I heard that he used to have a Holmstrom as well, but he'd just stand in front of the gate for the whole race....

[-DLC-]

 

Here's an old article (posted during the Triple Crown run) that gives some insight about Mario's time here in Vancouver and his humble beginnings.  This is who we saw out there...a smiling little jockey who rides like he's part of the horse, not on the horse:

 

Quote

He didn’t start out to ride for stardom.

He reminds us that when he was a child in Veracruz, Mexico, he had no shoes. His family had nothing to eat. He raced for food, for his family, for a kind of personal dignity that has nothing to do with the hall of fame or history.

Since the first microphone was shoved in his face in the winner’s circle in Kentucky, Mario has always said this first: It’s all about the horse. Then he laddered through Reddam, O’Neill, and the B.C. racing mentors that developed him: owner Glen Todd and trainer Troy Taylor, whom he landed with after being scouted at the Hipodromo de las Americas, his racetrack in Mexico City. Finally, Mario would thank his second family at Hastings.

Hastings is where Mario became a winning jockey, earned money to change the life of his family in Veracruz; it’s where he found friends among the hot-walkers, exercise riders and grooms. It’s where he learned to speak English.

There may never again be another jockey, or another moment that comes out of Hastings and seizes the imagination of the world, at least not in the same way.

But by consistently acknowledging his Hastings crew, Mario was acknowledging what everyone in the winner’s circle knows: it takes a village to raise a champion.

Mario will have other mounts, and a future in stakes racing, even if the odds of another Triple Crown run are uncertain at best. For Mario, the hardest part is over. For his friends at Hastings, the future is far less certain.

In the weeks before the Belmont, after Kentucky, after the Preakness, Mario returned to Vancouver to walk the backstretch shed rows, hang out with his friends, the grooms and hot-walkers and trainers, his presence a beacon; his good fortune an example of dreams made tangible.

When he rode at Kentucky and at Pimlico hundreds of hearts rode with him. Their stories are his, and his theirs.

Seeking calm during the international media blitz, Mario’s presence in the backstretch was a guarded, gleaming secret; if you were lucky, Paul Moretti who has stood sentry at the Hastings back gate for 20 years, would lean from his booth and slip the information like a prized jewel: Mario is here.

The newcomer

Days before the Belmont, word of Mario’s final visit passed from mouth to mouth, barn to barn. Everybody was talking about the coming race; what the win might mean to Hastings, to them.

By the corner of a tack room, Carmelo Joel Jacob Barragon swept up the same path Mario had just crossed. Barragon is small and compact, with almond-shaped black eyes, wide cheekbones and a profile, like Mario’s, that looks like it’s been carved from clean stone.

Like everyone in the backstretch at Hastings, on that day he was eager to talk about Mario. “Mario esta aqui,” he affirmed. His face brightened.

He knew him from back in Mexico where they both worked at the Hipodromo.

Although he was working on broken ground, a broom in one hand, a bucket in another, cleaning the horse path outside the shed row, he stood straight and tall.

Barragon explained, in Spanish, that this was his first year at Hastings. Although he had been a jockey and “gallopador” at the Hipodromo de las Americas in “D.F.” (Mexico City), here he is mucking stalls and walking hots, cooling horses after their morning exercise.

One day, he hopes to be an exercise rider here. For now, he said, he’s just grateful for the opportunity to come here, and to be able to help his family in Mexico.

Barragon, 42, recalled when Mario first came to the Hipodromo. He showed him a thing or two; Barragon made a gesture with his hand to indicate it was only a little he helped Mario.

The Hipodromo’s backstretch, Barragon explained, isn’t as nice as this. He gave a slight nod to the shed rows of the Hastings backstretch, bunkers of dilapidated cinder block barns with rusty tin roofs that look like a ghetto for horses. Along the shed rows there are bursts of colour, a whitewashed wall trimmed in red, a cat hotfooting along a railing, a washtub full of exuberant petunias.

Barragon pointed his broom toward the grandstand. “Se fue por alla.” Mario went that way.

The artist

The language of Hastings’ backstretch is Spanish almost as often as it is English. Every year, dozens of workers come to Vancouver on seasonal agricultural visas to work at Hastings. They are jockeys, like Mario, they are grooms and hot-walkers and exercise riders — the people nobody sees when the race is on.

The Hastings Park Learning Centre sits in the backstretch on the clubhouse turn; a warren of small rooms up a narrow linoleum staircase above the cookshack where the racetrackers go for hot soup and coffee and sometimes a beer.

A common room for AA meetings also has a terminal for betting, if you still do that, and a rack with a few hangers that dangle old sweaters and coats, collected by the Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association for backstretch workers and their families.

The dark upstairs hallway opens into a small bright room. Paintings, mostly of horses, hang on the wall and the windows look out over the track.

Here Juanita Sahl, a painter and lifelong lover of the racetrack, is one of many volunteers. She leads art therapy groups and painting classes in an open studio for backstretch workers. Mostly the students paint horses.

Several years ago, during a session, she looked out the window over the track. A race had just finished.

“A jockey was pulling up, and it was unlike anything I’d ever seen before,” she said. “I couldn’t see a muscle flinch as the horse galloped and pounded underneath him. Where was he taking the impact of all that power?”

Sahl had never seen this rider before. There was something magical in the way he rode the horse; she snapped a photo, and painted the image. It was Mario.

Those same qualities captured the attention of Canadian trainer Terry Jordan, who scouted Mario in Mexico, struck by the way he held his poise and balance and kept his stirrups short and high.

Jordan gave Mario the chance to come up to Vancouver, where he would met Todd and Taylor, the Vancouver duo who knew, even as they developed him, that he was destined for more.

“Glen Todd took him to Santa Anita and pushed him out of the nest,” says Sahl. “He encouraged him to ride for other owners. He had the vision and gave him that chance. It’s what we all would hope for, somehow.”

The tutor

The learning centre is the warm heart of the backstretch. Here, Mario, who spoke no English, took his first ESL tutoring from learning centre co-founder Jeannie Spence.

The centre operates seven days a week. Founded by the Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, supported financially by Great Canadian Casino and aided by instructional partners out of Capilano University, the centre offers peer tutoring, ESL, “Spanglish” classes, and GEDs; here the young hopefuls gather to learn and dream — but when there’s a race on, they jump up and glue themselves to the windows.

Cenek, an exercise rider, known only by his first name, works horses at Hastings six mornings a week for trainer Glen Todd, and tutors here in the afternoon.

After the morning works, three young men sat at a round table, taking careful notes and joking as Cenek, who has a rich, round Czech accent and a bright smile, tried to draw them into English conversation.

Edgar Mendoza, an exercise rider and groom, and Amadeo Perez, one of Hastings’ top riders this year, asked questions in Spanish. Cenek answered in a mix of Spanish and English.

Perez needed to know how to describe to a Canadian trainer the problem he had when he was working a horse this morning. “The horse was corriendo adelante ... then stops.”

Cenek understood immediately. “He stops because he needs horses in front of him. He needs something to run at.”

He wrote it out on the board, and the young men copied the words in neat script on scrap paper.

When the class was over the students drifted across the room to the computer terminals, where they posted photos of their last races to flickr and hit up Canadian government websites trying to figure out how to sort out their GST numbers and file income taxes.

“Mario threw a big barbecue for the guys here in the park after the Kentucky Derby,” Cenek said. “I don’t know if he’s going to save racing, but it’s good. It’s really good.”

Cenek, 42, has been a racetracker since he was a boy in what was then Czechoslovakia. School officials offered him three career choices: Miner, soldier or jockey.

He picked jockey.

Sent to study at a track in Prague, he raced until he grew too tall.

At 19 he fled Czechoslovakia, found refuge in Italy, and then made his way to Canada where he found his way to Hastings’ back gate with a resume in hand.

He’s been here, galloping horses, since 1994. “It’s addictive,” he says. “It’s a beautiful life.”

Six mornings a week he gets up at 2:30 or 3 a.m. — he doesn’t need an alarm — and rides his bike down Burnaby mountain, to be in the barns by 5 a.m., and gallop thoroughbreds on Hastings’ dirt track.

He’s been turfed. Cracked bones. Ridden in mud, snow and hail. He’s watched the resident eagles by the quarter pole, soaring overhead. He’s learned to fall, to follow if the horse goes down: try not to land on your head, try not to come to a complete stop, try to roll, slide, surrender.

How long he can keep galloping is an unanswered question. The line between luck and catastrophe is fine; it depends on every horse and every hoof strike.

It also depends on the future of racing itself.

When local residents opposed the installation of slots, a move to bring much-needed revenue to Hastings, Cenek joined other back and frontside workers to protest at City Hall.

If Hastings were to close, maybe, he says, he could translate, or teach.

“Teaching in the learning centre, I love it,” he said. “But I don’t have any certifications. Maybe I could get that one day. Or maybe just keep riding.”

The groom

Jorge Ducuara, a 36-year-old groom from Colombia, appeared at the learning centre door. Ducuara is round and soft, with curly hair and a warm, sweet smile.

“Mario was here,” he said. “I saw him go by.” A light flooded his face. “Mario,” he repeated, like an incantation.

“If he wins ...” he giggled, “we are all going to win.”

Anxiety about the future of Hastings has been buzzing at the groom like a low electrical current.

Ducuara grew up in an indigenous community in San Vincente De Caguan in the south of Colombia. In the late 1990s the region became a flashpoint in the battle between FARC guerillas and the Colombian government; most of the indigenous community was displaced, and Ducuara’s family was caught in the crossfire.

Ducuara’s father was killed, his grandfather was “disappeared,” his brothers were assassinated. Presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt was kidnapped from the area in 2002, and held in the jungle for six years. The soft-spoken man with the warm smile, too, was kidnapped and held for 17 days in a pit. He was beaten repeatedly; when he escaped, naked, covered in dirt and dried blood, he walked for two days to get to Bogota. In 2006, Ducuara, with his wife and toddler, came to Vancouver as a refugee.

“We were very frightened. We were nobody here. It was like being born again. We had to learn how to do everything, to speak, to walk the streets.”

The only job Ducuara, who was a registered nurse back home, could get was at the car wash. He made $30 a day. A guy at the car wash told him some Spanish-speaking guys he knew were making $400 a week hotwalking horses down at the racetrack, $5 a horse, two horses an hour. It adds up. Maybe he should try that instead?

Ducuara presented himself at the barn of trainers Mark and Toni Cloutier. He knew nothing about horses, got yelled at a lot, but kept his head down, kept coming back, kept walking hots and soon became a groom; now he cares for seven horses each day, lays his soft cheek next to their velvet noses, picks their hooves, makes sure they have hay.

“When you arrive each day, a horse will smell you, mark you. I am theirs, they are mine. You talk to them and they understand, Spanish as well, but if someone else comes along, they get jealous. It feels like you are loved more here than in your own home. I am at peace here.”

The dark, quiet mornings in the barns, the usefulness he found caring for, and being cared for by, the horses helped him work through his trauma, the grief and nightmares, more than therapists and medication.

“The day they say there is no more work and I will have to leave the horses ...” he pauses, overcome.

The former trainer

Some backstretch stars, like Elizabeth Stolzenberg, have already cut their losses and made the painful choice to leave. Last year she was one of Hastings’ top trainers. Now she’s a nursing student.

Stolzenberg came to Hastings Park for a practicum while taking a livestock program at university. “I had heard all the negative connotations about the backstretch, the alcoholics, the drug addicts. I was going to save all the horses. I discovered that the horses are well cared for, and as different as we all are in the hierarchy, we all have one goal: the horses.”

For Stolzenberg and others, the life becomes a vocation; relationships with outsiders are pretty much impossible.

“No I can’t go camping, I can’t take a day off. I know I have a broken arm, pneumonia, chipped knees, severed muscles, blood poisoning. I have to be there.”

Stolzenberg galloped horses in the morning at $10 a head, got a trainer’s licence and her talent for winning soon became obvious. A beautiful, delicately-boned blond, Stolzenberg says she was never harassed at the track; it’s a place where people help each other. When her girls were toddlers and she galloped in the early morning, 81-year-old trainer Troy Taylor would take them for doughnuts. Todd, too, was a mentor to her.

“Glen Todd has helped a lot of people; he helped me, he helped Mario,” she said. “We employ so many who otherwise would not have anywhere to go.”

There is a tolerance of different struggles and a humanity to the backstretch community. Many who work here do casual labour, but find meaning in their relationship with the horses; many live in the tack rooms and are homeless in the off-season. Between the owner and the person who mucks stalls for a few cash dollars is one common denominator that erases all differences: “The horse.”

Stolzenberg has two young daughters. Supporting them as a single parent became a struggle at the track with cutbacks in the racing schedule, fewer horses.

“When I started working there were 2,200 horses on the ground. Now it’s about 600.”

Virtually no one in the backstretch has benefits; the HBPA provides financial help and dental care, but an ambulance parked every morning in the backstretch is a flag for the dangers that are part of the job. A catastrophic accident last year, when her horse spooked and slammed his head up into hers, fractured Stolzenberg’s cheekbone and left her with a major concussion.

“It felt like Jell-O shaking in my head. I can still feel it. It still shakes like that.”

Stolzenberg hopes nursing will provide some security. She can be there for her girls, make them French toast in the morning. She is trying to be brave.

“I feel like I’ve lost my family. I’ve known these people for 20 years; even your foes, the ones you are competing with, the ones that might seem insignificant. It was always ‘good morning Sunshine, how are you?’”

She misses galloping her first horse on a clear, cold morning, seeing the snow on the mountain, the tugs in the river, the eagle in its tree. The huge adrenalin of winning a race; the nearly equal high of solving a minor problem, like why a horse won’t eat.

To her track family, it might look like she’s taken a safe bet, but it’s a hard loss.

“If somebody told me that Mario did breathe life back into the racing industry in Vancouver, and we were going to have a full and thriving track, if horse racing were to became as popular as hockey, I’d be the first one back in there with my boots on.”

The inspiration

Near the paddock, a woman in gum boots and a pink shirt pointed toward the racing office: “He’s in there.”

The door opened to an assortment of men at various stages of old: worn faces, grizzled beards, deeply grooved hands. Mario crouched by a table, slim as a blade of grass, and just as green in this room full of grey.

He looked up, eyes wide, soft and dark, as impeccably groomed as a thoroughbred, with a smile like sunlight through cloud.

A man before him held a hand up, palm flat, commanding all the attention in the room. Glen Todd was protecting the rider he cares for like a son. “No interviews. He’s doing a press conference tomorrow.”

When Mario heard that this would be a story not about the Belmont, or whether he he’ll win or lose, but about Hastings and the backstretch — his friends — he stood slowly, eased back from Todd’s table, looked around, checking, perhaps, that no camera crews were about to spring out and ambush. He gave Todd a gesture that meant wait. One minute.

Mario stepped outside, then turned protectively toward the microphone, shielded himself from view by the racing office door.

He was thoughtful and soft-spoken, repeated like a mantra what he had said in countless interviews since the Kentucky Derby, “Hastings, these people mean everything to me,” he said.

“They have done everything to help me, and I want to help them.”

He paused, searching for the right words as if correcting himself. “I wouldn’t be truthful if I said I am doing this for anyone but the horse. I am riding because of him. It’s not about me, it’s all about the horse. This horse has a huge heart.”

When he spoke about I’ll Have Another’s Heart, the heart of a champion, even without the Triple Crown, he meant the horse’s unfathomable spirit, his willingness to respond, to run, to win; but perhaps also he meant the muscle that pumps literally at the centre of it all, that will continue to beat, that will pump blood even through wounded limbs.

Mario will mount I’ll Have Another at the Belmont today, leading the post parade in a ceremonial tribute. When he does, he won’t be thinking about Hastings, the rutted roads around the shed rows, the watchers at the clubhouse turn, the labourers, the losses, the hopes, the wagers big and small; he won’t be thinking about the ones that went down, that made it halfway, about our wounded limbs, our collective longing, just once, to run.

He will only try to feel the horse’s thoroughbred heart, knowing it will never break, fully loaded, from this gate.

dryan@vancouversun.com

 

[Jaimito]

post race interview. Owner mentioned about naming the horse, and something about an Avalanche player...

 

Sullivan | O'Neill earns second chance at crown

 

http://www.courier-journal.com/story/sports/tim-sullivan/2016/05/07/sullivan-oneill-earns-second-chance-crown/84070686/

 

[-DLC-]

^I thoroughly enjoyed that, thanks.  And that's Mario, in a nutshell....unassuming, humble, nice guy.

[Ghostsof1915]

There's a lot of land by the riverside on the South side of Vancouver across from Richmond. Good place for a racetrack. 

[UnkNuk]

16 hours ago, CaptainCanuck001 said:

Nyquist will win the triple crown this year, IF he stays healthy. None of the other horses are in his class. 

I think he'll most likely win the Preakness.  The Belmont might be a problem.  The weird distance and the fact that some entries are fresh and have been aimed for the Belmont will be a test.  

[Jaimito]

5 hours ago, UnkNuk said:

I think he'll most likely win the Preakness.  The Belmont might be a problem.  The weird distance and the fact that some entries are fresh and have been aimed for the Belmont will be a test.  

That's why they are so few triple crown winners for past 30+ yrs.  Nyquist's trainer said he is the best hose he has trained, and judging by how good I'll Have Another was, he might be just the right one.  regardless, hope Mario will win Preaknes, and get a chance to get that triple crown. 

 

The official winning time for the 1 1/4-mile race was 2:01.31. That was almost two seconds faster than Triple Crown winner American Pharoah's time last year. Also faster than I'll Have Another.

[Jaimito]

11 hours ago, RUPERTKBD said:

Interesting that all his horses are named after Euros....

 

...I heard that he used to have a Holmstrom as well, but he'd just stand in front of the gate for the whole race....

Would be funny if he named one after Franzen the "mule".