Did anyone feel the air being let out of the balloon, with no bang, just a fizzle.  That’ s how I felt watching the progressively slower finish WITH NO CLOSERS COMING!  Nothing wrong with the effort of Palace Malice or even Oxbow, they both raced as hard as they could, but with fractions of 23+, 46+ and 1:10 for the front 6 furlongs — they (PM and OXBOW) ran the final 6 furlongs in a shade below 1:20.   I repeat 1:20!!!  And nobody could do anything!  Orb ran terribly, Golden Soul was spent, Overanalyze was total disappointment, and my horse — Vyjack —  all I can say is “why not a jack”.   I mean common, Affirmed would have stopped the teletimer in under 2:26 if he had this fairly glib track.

Again, as I always say and this is an object lesson, find a horse that is going to run better than he has ever run or find a horse who is very consistent — always with a big price — and don’t worry that they may not be fast enough!  That’s right, because sometimes the FAST horses forget to show up FAST.  Races fall apart, good horses run bad races and the 1 1/2  mile of The Belmont is really a killer.

One comment on Vyjack, I really wish Julian Leparoux had rangled him back the Joel Rosario did in The Gotham.  Julian’s soft touch allowed that horses to get too close to the pace — out of the gate — and he consequently got spun 8 wide into the first turn and way to close to the hot pace and he took a heavy bump to boot.  I am sure there are other trips that need to be reported, and I assure you I will dutifully and objectively bring them to the fore in this space over this week…

Password holder, the Post Race Analysis will be up on Wednesday – hopefully with proper video sync..