Weekend Winners Club

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Sunday, May 29
Belmont Park
Elmont NY
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The Belmont Stakes 148 field continues to narrow down as connections are becoming disinterested in taking on Preakness winner and Kentucky Derby runner-up Exaggerator, who does look rather invincible at the 12 furlong distance at this point. The highly raced work horse came out of the Preakness well and nobody seems be able to match his closing ability.
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Belmont Stakes Probables:

Status	Possible Contender	Odds	Style	Trainer	Last	Race
P	Exaggerator	2-1	S0	Desormeaux	1st	Preakness
P	Destin	6-1	EP4	Pletcher	6th	Kentucky Derby
P	Stradivari	7-1	EP6	Pletcher	4th	Preakness
P	Suddenbreakingnews	8-1	S0	Von Hemel	5th	Kentucky Derby
P	Cherry Wine	10-1	S0	Romans	3rd	Preakness
P	Mo Tom	10-1	S0	Amoss	8th	Kentucky Derby
P	Lani	12-1	S0	Matsunaga	5th	Preakness
P	Governor Malibu	12-1	EP5	Clemente	2nd	Peter Pan
P	Brody’s Cause	15-1	S0	Romans	7th	Kentucky Derby
P	Creator	15-1	S0	Asmussen	13th	Kentucky Derby

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The lightly raced Derby champion Nyquist will take some time off after a strong but disappointing 3rd place Preakness finish, his first loss ever, and freshen up for the summer circuit. Bob Baffert has several nice 3yo’s including the Sir Barton champion but will sit out as well. It’s probably just as well since he has a Belmont Stakes record similar to Todd Pletcher’s Derby record.
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Speaking of which, Todd looks like the primary challenger to Exaggerator’s dominance, and he has an excellent record in the Belmont Stakes, taking 2 wins in the last 10 years. He brings in two nice horses: Destin, 6th in the Derby in his 6th career race, and Stradivari, 4th in the Preakness in his 4th race. Their numbers are good, they’re lightly raced and fresh.
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Download Belmont Stakes Grid here to follow along.
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Aside from that, both of them have excellent running styles for this type of race, especially considering there are no front runners. There are only 3 in the current potential field that run anywhere near the front, including these two and Governor Malibu, the Peter Pan runner-up.
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In fact the remainder of the field consists entirely of S0’s, with the 3 pressers having a total of 13 Quirin Speed Points, reading as a deathly slow pace. This scenario has happened before and resulted in long shot winners such as Palace Malice, Drosselmeyer, Da Tara, and Commendable.
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It must be noted that Exaggerator’s first 6 career races were run as an early presser, and his style was an EP5. This included a front running win in the Delta jackpot towards the end of 2015, and the San Vicente sprint where he rated a length behind the front running Nyquist.
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After that, they switched the Curlin colt to a late running style, with equal success including his great Derby and Preakness finishes. But the Desormeaux brothers are both very smart, and will likely re-implement this running style for the Belmont. If it’s a snail’s pace that it looks like on paper, they will need to have him closer to the lead.
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However, for these reasons, if any of the 3 other early pressers get out in front of the Preakness champion early, he might have trouble catching all of them. His patented closing maneuver came up short in the Derby, despite plenty of speed in the race, and it could here as well, so they can’t afford to let him lollygag at the rear for half the race.
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At this point, it’s almost unreasonable to think any of the other late runners have a shot, because they’re plodders that have not shown the versatility to be able to run near the pace. So we’ve narrowed it down to a 4 horse race just based on the pace scenario. It would be only 3 winning contenders if we didn’t have proven success of Exaggerator running in the front pack in prior races.
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Stay tuned for more Belmont Stakes updates.
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Get the full Grid on 2016 Belmont Stakes Day here.

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