Moreno Wins Whitney

Horse racing is a game of ups and downs.  From thrilling victories and championships won, to hard-luck losses and, unfortunately, the occasional unspeakable tragedy.

On Saturday, Eric Guillot experienced both.

After the day's 5th race, Guillot's horse, Sir William Bruce, suffered cardiac collapse and died.  In the 10th, Moreno, the pride of his barn, wired the Whitney field and won the richest race of racing's greatest meet.

"I was disappointed, mostly crying when I lost my colt in the 5th. He was a very nice colt," Guillot said.  "Boy, you talk about highs and lows in this game, right?"

From the low of the sport's unfortunate, calamitous by-product, to the high of Grade I promise realized.

"I was shook up, I was crying emotionally...Our luck has been pretty bad, maybe this is the pendulum that swung the other way," croaked a tearful Guillot in the Winner's Circle - a rare departure from the jovial, lively character he is normally.

The character who was also on full display after the race.

"You hear that bell?! Someone just got taken to school!" he had cried on his way to see his victorious horse and collect the Whitney stakes hardware before meeting reporters and  mixing tearful remembrances with the comedy of triumph.

Such, I guess, is the schizophrenic nature of the game - like the truth that some days are just not your days, as today was not for prohibitive favorite Palace Malice.

The Todd Pletcher colt no-showed in the Whitney, turning for home and finding the gas tank empty, fading to the back as others rolled ahead to pursue, fruitlessly, Guillot's front-runner.

This was supposed to Palace Malice's chance to set the record straight after a bad step out of the gate cost him last year's Travers. This was supposed to be his race of redemption.

Instead, it became Guillot and Moreno's - who led the 2013 Travers until its last nose, when Will Take Charge overtook him for the win.

"Now, of all the horses in that race, I've beaten them all.  They've beaten me, but I've beaten them all," Guillot said after confessing to some nerves early in the race.  "He broke a little flat-footed, I was a little concerned," he said.  "[But] Junior listened, I said 'at any cost, be two [lengths] in front heading for the first turn.'"

And he was.  And then he was down the backstretch.  And then he was around the far turn, and all the way home for the win - stamping himself a Grade I winner and showing the skill some weren't sure he possessed.

"That's the thing about this horse, he's got serious talent," said Guillot, looking back on the race and doing his best to relish in as much of the high as he could.

"It was great, how can it not be, it's the Whitney, right?!"