DON'T DISMISS GIACOMO YET.Byline: KEVIN MODESTI Horse Racing horse racing, trials of speed involving two or more horses. It includes races among harnessed horses with one of two particular gaits, among saddled Thoroughbreds (or, less frequently, quarterhorses) on a flat track, or among saddled horses over a turf course with Now that Giacomo has sampled the experience of actually winning a big race, what if he realizes he likes it? Let's not Let's Not is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov. It was first published in Boston University Graduate Journal in December 1954. It was written for no payment as a favour to the journal, and later appeared in the collection Buy Jupiter. be too quick to dismiss the Kentucky Derby Kentucky Derby One of the classic U.S. Thoroughbred horse races. It was established in 1875 and run annually on the first Saturday in May at Churchill Downs track in Louisville, Ky. With the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes, it makes up U.S. racing's coveted Triple Crown. upsetter's chances of winning the May 21 Preakness and giving fans a thrill by taking a Triple Crown bid to the June 11 Belmont Stakes Belmont Stakes Oldest of the three U.S. horse races that constitute the Triple Crown. The Belmont originated in 1867 and is named after August Belmont (see Belmont family). The stakes is held in early June at Belmont Park, near Garden City, Long Island; the course is 1.5 mi (2,400 m). . We've heard all the reasons Giacomo shouldn't repeat the Kentucky Derby win in which he rallied from the back of the pack to win by one-half length over Closing Argument and a length over Afleet Alex Afleet Alex (born May 9, 2002 in Florida) is an American thoroughbred race horse who, in 2005, won two of America's classic races, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes. . He was a 50-1 fluke. He was an out-of-the-clouds stretch-runner catching a break when one of the fastest early paces in Derby history killed off the real contenders. His beaten rivals are sure to give better accounts of themselves in the Preakness because Pimlico tends to favor early speed over closers. Let's take those points one at a time and see if Giacomo is quite the hopeless case that early handicappers of the Preakness might believe. --A fluke? You read the 50-1 odds on Giacomo - and the 71-1 on runner-up Closing Argument - and figure they were a couple of claiming horses who wandered into the wrong starting gate starting gate n. Sports 1. A series of stalls with interconnected doors that open simultaneously at the beginning of a race. 2. . But this wasn't a six-horse race at Hollywood Park Hollywood Park may be several places:
Giacomo was one of the most popular Derby prospects in California in December after he came within a length of handing 2-year-old champion Declan's Moon his first defeat in the Hollywood Juvenile. He kept running just well enough to lose in three Santa Anita races. He finished fourth, between Breeders' Cup winners Wilko and Sweet Catomine, in the Santa Anita Derby The Santa Anita Derby is an American Grade 1 thoroughbred horse race for three-year-olds run each April at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, California and carries a purse of $750,000. . The oft-maligned Santa Anita Derby received an unimpressive Beyer speed figure The Beyer Speed Figure is a system for rating the performance of Thoroughbred racehorses in North America designed in the early 1970s by Andrew Beyer, the syndicated horse racing columnist for The Washington Post. of 98, but Wilko's 97 was the highest for a third-place finisher in any of the major Kentucky Derby preps. Maybe the Santa Anita Derby wasn't a bad class test after all. It would be one thing if long-shot winners of the Kentucky Derby routinely tumbled back to earth in the Preakness. They don't. In the past half-century, four horses won the Derby at 20-1 or higher and went on to run in Baltimore. Proud Clarion (1967) and Thunder Gulch (1995) finished third in the Preakness, and Charismatic (1999) and War Emblem (2002) won it. --A pace product? True enough, as far as it goes, that Giacomo could not have rallied from 18th, about 15 lengths behind the front-runner, if the three-quarter-mile pace of 1:09.59 hadn't cooked favorite Bellamy Road and others. But let's give Giacomo and his people a little credit. So Giacomo's speed figures haven't been high. Speed isn't the only attribute of a winning racehorse racehorse refers usually to thoroughbred but may also include standardbred, trotter. . He won the Derby because his athleticism enabled him to weave between opponents in the homestretch home·stretch n. 1. The portion of a racetrack from the last turn to the finish line. 2. Informal The final stages of an undertaking. Noun 1. at Churchill Downs. He won because his versatility allowed the colt who'd been mid-pack early in his Santa Anita races to drop to the back of the field in Louisville before launching his run. And he won because of jockey Mike Smith, who used his experience in 11 previous Derbies to judge the pace perfectly and let Giacomo run his race. He won the Derby because of his fitness, trainer John Shirreffs having prepared him to give the performance of his life on the day it counted. Fifteen lengths behind the blistering pace, Giacomo ran the first three-quarters of a mile in about 1:12 1/5 seconds. That fraction would have put him in the front half of the field in most Derbies and would have had him dueling for the lead in the Derbies won by Lil E. Tee Lil E. Tee was an American-bred Thoroughbred racehorse who in 1992 scored one of the biggest upsets in the history of the Kentucky Derby. A bay colt, Lil E. Tee was bred in Pennsylvania by Lawrence I. Littman. (1992), Silver Charm (1997) and Charismatic. So in the likely event the pace is different in the Preakness, Giacomo can be closer to the front. Here's how Derby winners who rallied from 15th or worse have done in the Preakness in the past 50 years: Needles (1956), Ferdinand (1986) and Fusaichi Pegasus (2000) finished second, and Canonero II (1971) and Pleasant Colony (1981) won it. --Payback time? Since Derby day, the prospective Preakness field has weakened. Don't Get Mad (fourth) and Buzzards Bay (fifth) are expected to wait for the Belmont, and Bellamy Road (seventh) and Bandini (19th) came up with injuries. Giacomo will have to beat Closing Argument, who may have run best in the Derby, and Afleet Alex, who gave his fans no reason to give up. The rest of the 16 horses vying for 14 spots in the Preakness are not frightening: Wilko (sixth), High Fly (10th), Greeley's Galaxy (11th), Noble Causeway (14th), Sun King (15th), Going Wild (18th), High Limit (20th), and new faces A.P. Arrow, Galloping Grocer, Golden Man, Hal's Image, Malibu Moonstone moonstone, an orthoclase feldspar, found in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Madagascar (and formerly in the St. Gotthard district of Switzerland). In spite of its pronounced cleavage, it is widely used as a gem. and Scrappy T. For at least another week, Giacomo's team can dream. He deserves more respect than he's getting. CAPTION(S): box Box: OUT OF THE BOX BY KEVIN MODESTI |
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