THE PROBLEM, if it can be called that, with Justify is the bubble he trains on, runs on.
The son of Scat Daddy has been dealing with swelling in his ankle, which makes his racing future about as secure as Bitcoin. And after Monday’s announcement from Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert, the writing is on the wall.
Baffert told media outside his Del Mar stable that Justify would not run in the Grade 1 Pacific Classic at Del Mar, nor would he run in the Grade 1 Travers Stakes. This, to be sure, is a Grade 1 bummer.
“Right now, we’re just looking to get him 100 percent,” Baffert said in a Horse Racing Nation.com story. “We’re in a holding pattern. I’d love to run him again, because he’s so much fun and exciting to watch. We should know more in a couple of weeks.”
If Justify doesn’t run in either of those races, would he train up to the Breeders’ Cup Classic? That would be a five-month layoff to run 10 furlongs against the world’s best horses. Seems unlikely.
And what of risk? The risk of running a horse that is even mildly injured, or has a propensity for injury, could, in a worse case scenario, be fatal. But for a horse that has more corporate interests than a football stadium, why ruin your investment?
This isn’t like Ahmed Zayat, the sole owner of American Pharoah, going on a victory tour that saw his colt win the Haskell, lose the Travers, then win the Classic. Justify feels more like a tech startup on the verge of a major IPO, not a brilliant athlete able to showcase his talents to eager racing fans all over.
In a particularly gripping story (no irony, I swear) on equine insurance, Horse Racing Nation quoted Muirfield Insurance’s Michael Levy saying, “Everyone’s got their own risk tolerance. The random analogy I usually give: If you bought a painting because you liked it, and the artist became famous, and your painting went exponentially up in value, would you increase the insurance on it hanging on your wall?”
Justify’s value as a stallion was never higher than during his gallop out of the Belmont Stakes. Six-for-six, a precocious freak who went from un-raced two-year-old to not just a Kentucky Derby champion, but a Triple Crown champion.
Matthew Delehanty, an analyst for Lavin Insurance, said in that same HRN story, “Is Justify’s value going to go up because he wins the Haskell or wins the Travers? Or is his value sort of already set?
“Insurance doesn’t really play a role in whether someone should race the horse or not. In my eyes — and this is unrelated to insurance — how does the stallion’s value get impacted if he races, say, not as well?”
And that’s the real risk, speak nothing of the horse’s physical health, even mental makeup, which never gets talked about. But, as we all know, a loss guts the value at stallion. How can he be worth anymore? He can’t, and with so many interests to please and appease (WinStar, Starlight Racing, China Horse Club, SF Bloodstock, and George Soros), the fact that the horse is allowed to eat out of his own tub strikes me as a physical risk on par with racing on two-weeks rest.
Such speculation and such wanton desire to see the stars of the sport—namely sophomores who win one of the three Classics—should come as no surprise. There is a buzz to the paddock when such a horse enters, leaves, gallops around the oval, enters the starting gate as innumerable superlatives echo from the PA.
If nothing else, the sport of horse racing should teach all of us a lesson in how to be present. As Ram Dass might say, “Be here now.”
Which brings me to what I dislike most about media scrums around a trainer whose horse just won a race: “What’s his next race?” Maybe this is a forced question, a must ask. You trade the sheer thrill of the moment, a spark of pure athletic genius for a time four weeks away that may never, and most likely will never, arrive.
The exception to this annoyance is asking the Derby winner if he’ll run in the Preakness because that is a series of races, a three-act narrative that fit together. So maybe there needs to be minor crowns throughout the calendar. Races that have cohesion, say Haskell-Travers-Penn Derby (I’m sure the folks at Parx would gladly move the Penn Derby to give all races a nice four-week break).
In any case, horse racing is an exercise in the here and now. Bask in it. Talk about it. Tweet about it. And like an Instagram story, let it have its shelf life and let it dissolve into the digital ether.
And like Baffert said about Justify, “I mean, what more could he do?”
The answer is nothing. Justify is Champion Three-Year-Old and a Hall of Famer as of today, maybe even Horse of the Year. How could a Triple Crown winner not be at least two of those things?
If you want to see Justify run again, may I suggest YouTube?
Brendan O’Meara is a freelance writer and author of Six Weeks in Saratoga. He also hosts The Creative Nonfiction Podcast.
