BALTIMORE – If any horse had a legitimate excuse for failing in the Kentucky Derby it was the 11-2 favorite Sweetnorthernsaint, who was all but upended in the critical first furlongs out of the starting gate.
He was dead in the dust before they hit the turn. As such, Sweetnorthernsaint is the one most likely to rebound with a big effort in Saturday’s Preakness Stakes and pose a spoiler-threat to the wonder horse Barbaro.
He is the trip handicapper’s special.
“He will really have to fire a big one to win Saturday,” said his 39-year-old trainer Michael Trombetta yesterday from his barn at Laurel. “But he’s doing well, he has bounced back beautifully from the Derby and he deserves another shot.”
While he admires Barbaro’s feats – “he’s a very good horse” -Trombetta is not intimidated. “Just about every thoroughbred that’s ever been born is beatable,” he said. “Very few horses retire unbeaten.”
Trombetta is himself still recovering from the shocks of the Derby. The first came near post time when he looked up at the tote board and saw that Sweetnorthernsaint, his horse of all horses, was the favorite.
A couple of minutes earlier, the horse had been holding steady at 7-1, but in the next couple of flashes dropped to 11-2. In a race with more than $100 million in the betting pool, it takes a ton of bucks to move a horse 1½ points in 90 seconds.
“It was not my money,” Trombetta said plaintively.
The second – and bigger – shock came shortly after. Trombetta, like every handicapper in the country, expected to see Sweetnorthernsaint right up front from the gate, pressing the mad speedballs, Keyed Entry and Sinister Minister.
Instead, Trombetta found him in the rear, running 17th, with just three stragglers behind him. The game was over before it had even started.
“We lost everything at the jump,” he said. “All our plans went up in smoke.”
He thinks Saturday should be different. With less than half the Derby’s 20-horse stampede lined up for the Preakness, Sweetnorthernsaint should break cleanly and not be seriously impeded in the run to the clubhouse turn.
And if he runs to his figs, he should be right there at the finish. Before the Derby, Sweetnorthernsaint’s Beyer speed figs consistently shaded Barbaro’s.
However, the shape of the Preakness becomes trickier by the day. A week ago, Like Now, the free-running Gotham winner, appeared to be the main speed of the Preakness, with the Saint and Brother Derek right behind him.
Now in comes Bernardini, a lightly-raced colt with a ton of early speed, and yet another newcomer, a speed freak named Diabolical. Suddenly, the Preakness front end may look like the Long Island Expressway on Friday nights – or the Derby all over again.
The nice clean, clear trip everyone expected in the Preakness may not be there after all.
Is there a plot line here? Not in Trombetta’s mind. “When you put up a million dollars and it looks like only a few horses are going for it, others start taking a second look and decide to take a shot.”
Trip handicappers, who track races from gate to wire looking for horses hampered by interference, bad rides, bad starts, wide trips, etc., usually pounce on victims like Sweetnorthernsaint, expecting sharp improvement in their next start at juicy odds.
That won’t happen in this case because the Derby is so heavily analyzed and publicized that everyone knows what happened to Sweetnorthernsaint in the Derby and is likely to bet accordingly in the Preakness.
Still, this is one Saint who, with a bit of luck, could come marching in.
