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Frozen Moment: Commendable's surge at the half-mile pole
By Marc Connolly
ABC Sports Online
ELMONT, N.Y. -- He knew.
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Commendable, an 18-1 longshot, surprised everyone but trainer D. Wayne Lukas by winning the Belmont Stakes. |
It didn't matter that everywhere trainer D. Wayne Lukas looked this week, there were doubters. His chestnut colt, Commendable, garnered so little attention that Lukas claims only two writers visited Barn 10 since he made the trek up to New York from Churchill Downs on Tuesday. Owners Bob and Beverly Lewis wondered aloud to Lukas that next morning if coming here was the right choice. Even Lukas' wife asked him on Saturday morning if his horse had a chance to make some noise.
Like any great competitor, he relished this underdog role after several years of always being the hunted, and never the hunter.
After successfully keeping that famed mischievous smirk under wraps all week, the Hall of Fame trainer was finally able to let go when Commendable fired past Hugh Hefner at the half-mile pole en route to a rousing victory in the 132nd running of the Belmont Stakes on Saturday afternoon.
Such a seemingly effortless move was all in the plans, said esteemed jockey, and now three-time Belmont winner, Pat Day.
"When I talked to Mr. Lukas, he said the important thing was to have an energy-saving ride," said Day, the winner of nine Triple Crown races over his illustrious 27-year career. "We knew Hugh Hefner would be going out to the lead, so my job was to get Commendable into a comfortable spot tracking him."
Lukas said the first lesson he teaches in Horse Racing 101 is to "take what's right in front of you." And that's exactly what Day did after emerging from the lackluster conglomeration of horses that, for the most part, dragged themselves around Belmont Park due to the excessive heat.
"He was up on the bridal, but he was doing whatever I wanted him to do," said Day, who won the 1989 Belmont with Easy Goer and the 1994 Belmont with the Lukas-trained Tabasco Cat. "Going to the half-mile pole when he crept up on Hugh Hefner ... I was not gonna rustle with him at that point just to stay in second. I felt like as long as he was moving smoothly and comfortable, it'd serve my purpose better to let him do that."
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Well, Pat Day stole the race. You can't let a horse get away like that with Pat Day up and think you can beat him. ” |
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— Aptitude trainer Bobby Frankel |
Jorge Chavez, who had the mount on Hugh Hefner, admitted he wasn't worried at that point.
"I was OK until the last half-mile," said Chavez. "I still had horse."
Bobby Frankel, trainer of runner-up Aptitude, knew the field was in trouble at that point.
"Well, Pat Day stole the race," said Frankel, saddling his first Belmont entry. "You can't let a horse get away like that with Pat Day up and think you can beat him."
The always-humble Day reasoned that it had a lot more to do with him simply having a more powerful horse at that point.
"He passed him very easily," claimed Day. "As a matter of a fact, as soon as I passed that horse, he relaxed even more. He was happy."
Lukas couldn't bear the 90-plus-degree temperatures, so he decided to watch the race inside in the bowels of Belmont Park by himself. Rather than create any sort of disturbance, he quietly walked over to one of the dozens of normal-sized televisions around the grounds and watched the action with complete strangers.
"[When] we hit the five-eighths pole, I turned to a woman -- a complete stranger -- and said, 'Commendable is gonna win the Belmont,'" kidded a boisterous Lukas at the postrace press conference. "She said, 'How do you know that,' and I said 'I trained him.'
"She almost passed out."
From that point on, Lukas could have given the women mouth-to-mouth recitation because no one was going to catch his 18-1 longshot.
"When I got to the quarter-pole, I knew we had a pretty good cushion, but I didn't know what the last quarter of a mile had in store for us. But he kept rolling," said Day. "I knew that if anyone came at him and offered him a challenge that there was some reserve there ? He still wasn't at the bottom of the well when we came to the stretch."
In the end, it turned into a pacer's race, and no one -- not a single soul -- can pace like Pat Day. Knowing the field, no one had to tell Lukas that, and he made sure the most-respected jockey in the industry was on his side for the second Saturday in June.
"One decision that was paramount to what we wanted to do here was to get Pat Day," said Lukas, who later compared the partnership between the raw Commendable and wily Day as "bacon and eggs."
The rest you can chalk up to a gifted trainer whose 13th Triple Crown triumph further proved his genius. He knew that if the horse he saw in the early mornings -- before even the media makes their rounds -- showed up on Saturday, that he'd have reason to celebrate.
He even told the Lewises last fall that their colt would be a force to be reckoned with at this year's Belmont. Knowing that gave Day the confidence to take the mount in the first place and to carry out his instructions, which paid dividends at that half-mile marker in front of the world. It helped to make the 17th-place Kentucky Derby finisher the first colt that's ever skipped the Preakness after the first jewel without running in another race to later find itself in New York's winner's circle.
"I've learned over the years, you can't count Mr. Lukas out in one of these major fixtures," said Day.
As the horse racing enthusiasts have known for years, Day could have been speaking of himself.
As corny as it may come off, Saturday was truly a day that resulted in Commendable performances all around, from the late-blooming colt, to his Hall of Fame connections. |
