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Post position notebook: Pegasus right where he wants to be
By Mike Diegnan
ABC Sports Online
BALTIMORE -- So far Triple Crown contender Fusaichi Pegasus has received the luck of the draw.
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Fusaichi Pegasus arrived at Pimlico on Wednesday. He drew the No. 7 post and was listed as the 3-5 favorite. |
Even Neil Drysdale is happy.
The British-born trainer, who delivered Fusaichi Pegasus to Pimlico on Wednesday, has taken more precautions with the Kentucky Derby champion than his competitors. Before bringing his horse to Saturday's Preakness Stakes (ABC, 4:30 p.m. ET), Drysdale scouted the track. From there, he shirked normal custom for the Derby champion and put his horse in the backstretch stables, away from the other seven horses who will run this weekend.
If his horse is going to win the Triple Crown, Drysdale is going to do it his way.
So far, things have worked his way. In the Derby, Pegasus did not create the havoc that was predicted prior to the race and it went off without a hitch. From there, he calmly ran in traffic before cruising to victory by one and one-half lengths.
For the Preakness, the field quickly dwindled to eight horses from the 19 that ran in Louisville, and Pegasus is positioned right where Drysdale wanted -- the seventh position.
"This is fairly straightforward," he said of the 3-5 favorite. "It's a quarter-mile run to the first turn. With eight horses, I don't think it's that important."
Drysdale is not alone in his pleasure of the draw's outcome.
"We're happy with it," said Red Bullet's trainer Joe Orseno. "You couldn't end up with too bad a place."
Last week, Drysdale said that the Preakness poses a bigger challenge than the Belmont Stakes for his bay colt to achieve infamy as the 12th Triple Crown champion. Now he is well on his way towards that goal.
"I don't think tactic matters too much," Drysdale said. "Obviously in a match race, there are two horses, and it matters a lot. When you have less horses, the more tactic is involved."
Tactic will actually come into play as trainers must figure out how they will overcome the skill of FuPeg -- as he is becoming known around the track.
"I think he is a legitimate favorite, but I don't think anyone in the room is conceding it to him," said High Yield's trainer, D. Wayne Lukas. "I think you all as media members are conceding a lot more than trainers. But it is our nature to be optimistic and not to concede because we are in the arena competing. I don't think anybody is totally conceding in light of what we have seen so far."
Despite the clean start to the Derby, Lukas still fears a problem to Saturday's start. He compared it to the start of the Wood Memorial, when the $4 million colt created a three-minute delay prior to the race.
"It's a concern because we want the race to go off without a hitch," Lukas said. "I do, Neil Drysdale does. Everybody does. We want a very trouble-free race.
"The difference we are going to find is, when you are at Churchill Downs, you come around the track and you go in almost virtually behind the gate in a chute. When you are Pimlico, when you are finished warming up, they place the gate immediately across the track in the stretch. So instead of sneaking up on it like he can at Churchill, he will be right in front of it. It may cause him some concern."
History lessons
No one takes the post position draw more seriously than D. Wayne Lukas. Then again, no one has been to more Triple Crown draws than the Hall of Fame trainer. The winner of five Preakness races, he studies and analyzes the draws similar to a football coach watching game film for hours before a big game.
Before the Kentucky Derby, Lukas heads to the Derby museum to study how the horses have done. Prior to the Preakness draw, he again determined how he was going to place his colt, High Yield.
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I think he is a legitimate favorite, but I don't think anyone in the room is conceding it to him ” |
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— D. Wayne Lukas on Fusaichi Pegasus |
Yet, after all his homework, Lukas still moved High Yield to a different position than what history told him to do. Position No. 6 has landed 14 winners, more than any other, including 1999 winner Charismatic, one of his horses. Yet Lukas chose to put High Yield at No. 5, between second favorite Red Bullet and Bob Baffert's Captain Steve.
Lukas' knowledge of the draw and its history allowed him to predict where each horse would end up -- even before the names were drawn for selection order. He claimed owner Bob Lewis as a witness to his prediction.
"I don't take any of this lightly," he said.
Nonetheless, Lukas felt that the draw was more anti-climatic than anything. There are just eight horses running in the field compared to the 19 that entered the Derby, which left High Yield in the 17th position and in the auxiliary gate.
"I don't think that post position beat us in the Derby," he said. "I think that the horse didn't fire, didn't run. Having said that, I am much more comfortable with the one we got today."
High Yield never had a chance in the Derby. After getting bumped from the start and attempting to go outside in the later stages, he simply could not catch up to Fusaichi Pegasus.
In the morning odds, he is listed at 10-1, midway in the pack.
But if Lukas really does his homework, he will also know that in 1996, Louis Quartoze was a miserable 16th in the Derby (Same as High Yield) and won the Preakness.
His rider that day? Pat Day, who of course will be riding on High Yield this Saturday.
Poor Hal
Hal's Hope, owned and trained by the 88-year-old Harold Rose, once again drew bad luck in the draw.
Hal's Hope, which finished 16th in the Derby after leading at the three-quarter's pole, likely drew the least favorable position in the eight-horse draw. A speed horse, he will have to attack from the outside instead of the rail, where another speed horse -- Hugh Hefner -- will likely take the early lead.
Even the business-like Lukas felt bad for his counterpart.
"Everyone's raring to go except Hal's Hope," Lukas said. "They are having bad luck. They had bad luck in the Derby and they drew badly. In light of what their horse would like to do, I don't think they're in a very good spot."
Despite choosing last, Rose did give a smile when he approached the podium and said, "After a great deal of deliberation, we've decided on post eight."
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