Preakness 2022: ‘Everything lined up’ for Early Voting but what about for the Triple Crown series?

Chad Brown’s heart sang as he watched the Preakness unfold according to the plan he and Seth Klarman had concocted six weeks earlier.

Using all their best data and intuition, the trainer and owner had guessed Baltimore would be the place to strike with their fast, tough, inexperienced colt, Early Voting. And for the second time in five years, here was the proof that Brown and Klarman knew what they were doing by skipping the Kentucky Derby.

“Everything lined up,” Brown said Sunday after traveling back to his home base in New York overnight.

But this triumph of analysis sucked any forward momentum out of a Triple Crown series that had already featured a Preakness buildup devoid of Kentucky Derby winner Rich Strike. Early Voting will not go on to the June 11 Belmont Stakes, just as Rich Strike did not go on to the Preakness after his 80-1 dream run in the Derby. Racing fans are left to wonder if the Triple Crown series is really a series at all.

Not since Justify’s Triple Crown in 2018 have we seen a horse win even two of the three races.

That possibility is still on the table, with Rich Strike expected to headline the field for the Belmont. But the Derby winner’s owner, Rick Dawson, skipped the Preakness because he was uncomfortable running his horse on two weeks’ rest. His decision — lauded by many as a welcome sign of care for Rich Strike’s health — effectively severed the Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont into three distinct events rather than the traditional gauntlet for elite 3-year-olds.

With neither Early Voting nor Epicenter (runner-up in the Derby and Preakness) pointed for the Belmont, fans will have to wait until the summer (if then) for the high-profile rematches that usually spice up the Triple Crown.

What’s left to say then as the carnival moves away from Pimlico Race Course?

This year was billed as a return to normal for Baltimore’s largest spring event, with pandemic-era crowd restrictions lifted and the infield reopened for accompanying parties and concerts. That narrative proved partially true, but with no Derby winner on hand and the heat dissuading some patrons, the Preakness was not all the way back to peak form. The crowd, described by The Stronach Group as “60,000-plus,” was less than half the pre-pandemic norm, though the track operator said at least some of that was by design. The customary roar when nine contenders entered the starting gate was less full-throated, with plenty of empty chairs visible along the track’s apron. The joy surrounding Rich Strike’s shocking charge in Kentucky was not replicable, no matter how perfect a race Early Voting ran.

That takes nothing away from what Brown and Klarman, who grew up three blocks from Pimlico, accomplished. Picking the right race has always been a vital part of the trainer’s art, and as Klarman suggested, Brown might be better at it than anyone in the game. It makes sense that a wildly successful hedge fund manager would partner with such a horseman, and they have made their mark on the sport in addition to building a close friendship.

Their 2017 Preakness win with Cloud Computing was a monument to effective planning, a classic victory pulled from a horse that showed no sign of greatness either before or after the third Saturday in May. Early Voting might prove to be a more accomplished racer, but he too benefited from Brown and Klarman’s restraint in avoiding the 20-horse maelstrom of the Derby. Theirs might not be the most romantic approach, but it paid off.

And let’s not forget jockey Jose Ortiz, who recognized that charging after the early lead, Early Voting’s expected setting, was not the right play on Saturday. His patience in the race fit the theme around this Preakness champion.

Steve Asmussen, meanwhile, could only stew in another evening of disappointment. The most prolific winner in North American history has every reason to believe Epicenter is the best 3-year-old in the land, but he has neither a Derby nor Preakness victory to show for it. Asmussen was perplexed as he watched Epicenter fall so far back early in the race. He was still in seventh 3/4 of a mile in, not the plan for a colt that dominated his Derby prep races from more forward placements.

Owner Ron Winchell speculated Sunday that his horse was “a little flat” because of the quick two-week turnaround from the Derby. His sharpest efforts have come off five- and six-week breaks.

Epicenter could still be headed for a great career; Asmussen-trained Gun Runner (Early Voting’s sire, coincidentally) won American Horse of the Year honors a year after he finished third in the Kentucky Derby and skipped the other two Triple Crown races. But if that’s his destiny, it will have to wait.

Asmussen did leave Pimlico with a $50,000 bonus for achieving the best overall results of any trainer across Preakness weekend.

The story that captured the most prerace attention, 86-year-old D. Wayne Lukas’ bid for a seventh Preakness win with the filly Secret Oath, also ended in disappointment. She “made a big, sweeping run” in Lukas’ words, to move up from ninth at the half-mile mark to fourth at the finish. But Secret Oath too is done with the Triple Crown series and will prepare for battles against other fillies in the summer and fall.

Of the nine Preakness runners, only third-place finisher Creative Minister, who validated his owners’ $150,000 decision to add him to the field, seems certain to head for the Belmont, though fifth-place Skippylongstocking could join him.

154th BELMONT STAKES

Final leg of Triple Crown series

Elmont, New York

June 11

TV: Chs. 11, 4 (coverage begins 5 p.m.)