The Belmont Stakes provided a coronation for Justify, as well as another massive accomplishment for Bob Baffert, the elite trainer who can take credit for his second Triple Crown in four years when the chestnut horse won Saturday. However, some other figures closely associated with that race are expressing unhappiness with how it unfolded, specifically with how a second Baffert-trained horse may have provided Justify with undue help.
Restoring Hope, which finished eighth under jockey Florent Geroux, broke out of the gate a few paces behind the leaders but quickly made up ground, bursting forward through the middle of the pack as Justify stayed in front while close to the rail. When the horses approached the first turn, Restoring Hope took a noticeably wide path that went rightward in front of Noble Indy before veering back to the left in a manner that appeared to push Bravazo to an inside position behind Justify.
Restoring Hope stayed in second place up to the far turn, then began to fall back as Justify and jockey Mike Smith held a two-length lead. They were never really challenged after that, with Gronkowski finishing second, Hofburg third, Bravazo sixth and Noble Indy in 10th and last place.
“It definitely seemed to me he was more of an offensive lineman than a racehorse trying to win the Belmont,” Mike Repole, the co-owner of Noble Indy and fourth-place Vino Rosso, said of Restoring Hope to the New York Post, “and Justify was a running back trying to run for a touchdown.”
“Why would you send a horse that breaks bad and take everybody out, then come back in?” Vino Rosso’s jockey, John Velazquez, said to the Daily Racing Form. “That’s his job, to protect the other horse and it worked for them. You have to give it to them.”
Baffert said Sunday that the “plan” for Restoring Hope, which shared the worst odds to win (30-1) with Noble Indy and seventh-place Free Drop Billy, was to “sit off Justify.” However, the trainer said, Restoring Hope “got really rank,” or unmanageable, so Geroux “had to get away from” Smith and Justify “so they wouldn’t go so fast.”
“When he broke a step slow – he’s kind of an aggressive horse to ride, he pulls very hard – I wanted to make sure I put him in the clear,” Geroux said (via DRF). “I didn’t want to break, get the horse covered up and then the horse starts getting aggressive behind horses. It would have been even worse if he was behind horses.”
Restoring Hope’s owner, Gary West, expressed confusion with Geroux’s handling of his horse, telling the New York Post in an email, “I have no earthly idea what Florent was thinking or what his race strategy was. Had I known better, the first eighth of a mile I would have thought it was a quarter-horse race, not the mile-and-a-half Belmont. Maybe the horse was completely out of control and Florent had no choice. I will never know.”
No one was saying that Justify, the overwhelming favorite Saturday, would not have won the race without the help of his stablemate or didn’t deserve to be a Triple Crown winner. Repole, though, anticipated a review by racetrack stewards, saying, “I probably expect them to look into reckless riding by Florent and bring him in to question him about what he was thinking and what his tactics were.”
According to the New York Post, Wayne Lukas, Bravazo’s trainer, did not think Restoring Hope affected the ultimate outcome. However, the four-time Belmont winner said of the horse, “That was strange the way they sent him up there. I mean, he compromised a few horses with blocking and so forth.”
“He has natural speed. His only chance was to be up near the lead,” Baffert said of Restoring Hope.
Repole had also wanted Noble Indy to take an early lead and push a pace that Justify might have found taxing, potentially allowing for Vino Rosso to use his late speed to win the race. He said that he and the horse’s trainer, Todd Pletcher, “were crystal clear” to the jockey, Javier Castellano, “to make the lead,” but for some reason it didn’t happen.
“He wanted me to be on the lead, but I didn’t have enough speed to get to the lead,” Castellano said (via DRF). “I made an effort, but I got to the point where I had to give up. How far can I go – 10 wide – and try to go to the lead? I can’t.”
“Javier opted to go to his plan B,” Pletcher said. “Mike and I didn’t discuss a plan B.”
Adding a layer of complexity was the fact that the other co-owner of Noble Indy, WinStar Farm, is also a majority owner of Justify. Thus WinStar Farm, unlike Repole, would have had no desire to see Noble Indy set a pace that would have hurt its prized horse’s chance at Triple Crown immortality.
That sort of conflict had professional handicapper Kevin Cox tweeting Saturday, “THIS is why common trainers & owners need to be coupled. You have to protect the public.”
“Justify’s a freak, super horse, undefeated, amazing what he’s done,” Repole said. “Who knows if he would have won the race anyway? We’ll never know.
“At the end of the day, Bob had a game plan for his two jockeys, we had a game plan for our two jockeys. His two jockeys executed his plan, Johnny executed our plan and Javier didn’t execute the plan.”
