Horse racing: Justify eyes Triple Crown after tough victory

WASHINGTON: Justify was looking “bright” after a hard-fought victory in the Preakness Stakes, trainer Bob Baffert said Sunday, with all signs pointing toward a run at Triple Crown glory.

“I don’t see why we don’t go to the Belmont,” Baffert told reporters at Pimlico racetrack in Baltimore, shortly before Justify began a trip back to Churchill Downs at Louisville where he’ll prepare for the June 9 Belmont Stakes.“As long as he stays like this, he looks good. He looks pretty bright.”

After wins in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, Justify could become just the 13th horse to sweep US flat racing’s Triple Crown. But after a convincing 2 1/2-length triumph at Churchill Downs two weeks earlier, Justify had to dig deep on the rain-sloppy track at Pimlico, putting away Good Magic in the stretch then holding off a late charge by Bravazo who finished second by half a length.

Lending an eerie note to the proceedings, the fog that shrouded Pimlico on Saturday obscured much of the back-stretch duel between Justify and Good Magic, the Chad Brown-trained colt that finished second on the Kentucky Derby. “It was like the longest race of my life,” said Teo Ah Khing, chairman of the China Horse Club, which co-owns Justify. “Twenty seconds without seeing the horse felt like years.” After Justify pulled it off — living up to his 2-5 favorite’s status, even jockey Mike Smith admitted the impressively built three-year-old “got a little tired” at the end of the 1 3/16-mile Preakness. That has some pundits wondering if he’ll be vulnerable over the 1 1/2 mile Belmont distance. Smith thinks that won’t be a problem for a horse as talented as Justify — unraced as a two-year-old but winner of all five of his career starts in the space of three months.

“It takes a whole lot to do what he did yesterday in only four starts,” Smith said. “This was his fifth race, pretty incredible.“If I’d have kept my foot on the gas, he’d have won by farther,” Smith added. “But I had Good Magic beat and I wasn’t expecting anyone to come flying the way Lukas’s horse (Bravazo) did.

“I peeked under my shoulder, didn’t see anybody and I wanted to get him home safe and sound and not get after him and make him do any more than he had to do there at the end.“But I’ll tell you what, when (my horse) hit the wire, boy, he locked on Bravazo and he wanted to gallop out.”

Baffert was the last trainer to saddle a Triple Crown winner, when American Pharoah completed the treble in 2015 to end a 37-year drought.If Justify pulls off the feat, Baffert would become just the second trainer, after James “Sunny Jim” Fitzsimmons in the 1930s to win two Triple Crowns.