Justify Lives Up to the Hype. Is Saratoga in His Future?
It may not have shown by his 4/5 odds at post time, but Justify had his doubters. Was it because he was so lightly raced before this run at a Triple Crown? Maybe it was the fact that he was trying to win a sixth race in only 111 days. Or was it the steep history making it all the more unbelievable that we might see another Triple Crown winner in only four years?
Whatever the doubts, they were erased by a wire to wire win in the Belmont Stakes on Saturday in front of more than 90,000 people. With the victory, Justify became only the second horse ever to win the Triple Crown with undefeated record (Seattle Slew also did it in the 1970s). Bob Baffert entered his own exclusive club with a second Triple Crown added to his resume. Along with "Sunny Jim" Fitzsimmons, who accomplished the feat in the 1930s, Baffert has done the unthinkable.
In 2015, after American Pharoah dominated the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, Belmont and Haskell, Baffert brought his champion colt to Saratoga Springs where the Graveyard of Champions claimed another. Would Baffert dare bring this Triple Crown winner to the Spa City? No horse has ever won the Triple Crown and the Travers Stakes in the same year. If more history is what Baffert is after, then why not roll the dice? The way I see it, there's nothing to lose.