2018 Preakness: Justify (but barely)

In the end it wasn't the dominating tour de force that many expected.  Good Magic, and jockey Jose Ortiz, pushed Justify around the track, and then the latter held off a hard-charging Bravazo to take down the 2nd jewel of the Triple Crown on a muddy, rainy, foggy day at Pimilo Downs.

Sure, it's enough to guarantee that the Belmont will matter because, and let's be honest here, the third jewel ONLY matters if a single horse takes down the first two. But it wasn't dominating enough to scare anyone away, and it might have given other trainers a peek at how to beat the big chestnut colt that's catching the Nation's attention.

Justify will run to the front, no matter how ridiculous the pace may be.  And I'm betting other trainers are taking notice of that.  It wouldn't surprise me all that much to see a very fast miler stuck into the field by a trainer who also has a deep closer. The Belmont is a wrench of a race, 1 1/2 miles, a distance these horses have never gone before, and will probably never go again.

Can you force Justify to blow it out in the first mile, and hope to sweep up the pieces in the end?  It's possible.  That's what Sham was hoping to do against Secretariat, of course, well all know how that ended....

As it was with the first two jewels of the Triple Crown your answer to the Belmont is going to boil down to one question:  Do you believe in Justify?

For the first two legs my answer was a resounding "yes", and I put my money where my mouth was. Sadly, I missed the Superfecta by one horse (dang you Tenfold) so profits were negligible (and, because of the speed bias of the track the rest of my betting card was an unmitigated disaster) but it's always nice to pick the winner.

I'll be trying to do the same in the Belmont.

There will be no value in Justify, the dumb money that pours in will all but ensure that he goes off somewhere around 1/5 or (more likely) 1/9 so it's all going to come down to the exotics, OR picking the horse that snatches the Triple Crown away from Smith, Baffert and the hundreds of people who seemingly have an ownership stake.

It's always wise to find a horse that's won on this track before.

Local trainers seem to pull upsets as well.

But for now we're going to congratulate Justify and his connections on a race well ran, another win and another step towards greatness.

Some people are saying that the Triple Crown is suddenly too 'easy' as if we didn't go over 30 years without a winner.  But Justify hasn't won the thing yet, and I've got a feeling we're just about to see just how difficult winning the damn thing really is.