It takes a special colt to make it through the grueling schedule of the Triple Jewel series. Each year 3yos are asked to do the impossible: run far enough, fast enough, and often enough over their winter and spring campaigns to gather the points required to earn the right to even step into the starting gate at the fabled Kentucky oval, to ship to the raucous Maryland party, or grace the grand old New York track. <\/P>
Trainers start having Derby dreams even before the Breeders Bowl, but after the Juvenile is run, we gather on message boards and chat rooms, in IM sessions and over the phone, bragging about our future stars and commiserating about tough losses. We console each other, citing the too-short nature of a race as the reason our colt lost, or vaunting a colt’s tremendous closing kick as the mark of a future Bluegrass champion. We pore over the stakes schedule, guessing how many points we’ll need to get into the big dance, and hoping against hope our colt’s record exceeds that number. We strategize entries, ducking the big horses or going head to head in an effort to show everyone that ours is best of all. <\/P>
And finally we get to Derby Week. We checked the entry box frequently during the week, wondering how deep into the rankings the field will reach. If our colt wasn’t in the top 20, we watched this very nervously, wondering if we should enter “just in case”, or if instead we should look toward a residency derby, or any of the other graded stakes available. If we were one of the lucky few to have a horse in the top 20, we entered early and sit back semi-relaxed, secure in the knowledge that we had a spot in the biggest race for 3yo dirt horses and yet nervous about how our colts will handle the toughest test of their young lives. <\/P>
As soon as the entry box closed, the press and handicappers kicked into high gear. Handicapping contests for the Derby were popular on the main and residency message boards. The Black Type Bugler <\/EM>staff busily reviewed the field, poring over past performances and interviewing trainers. Color commentary about the social events leading up to the Derby filled the pages of the sim’s premier publication. <\/P> Finally Derby Day dawned. Eager racegoers clicked the “watch races” link, waiting for the race results to be posted. Trainers with entries sat on the edge of their seats, yelling at their computers as their colts uncharacteristically dropped back, or surged to the lead as planned. As the race progressed, we watched with high anticipation, hoping against hope that it would be our colt with his head in front at the wire. <\/P> 1st: Ataun<\/STRONG><\/P> 2nd: Passing Stone<\/STRONG><\/P> 3rd: Henianlauch <\/STRONG><\/P> In just 2 minutes and 2.2 seconds, the race was over. We went to the results page to check the race time and speed figure. Perhaps we watched the rest of our horses run, knowing nothing could top our Derby win. Perhaps we went looking for a winner to make up for the Derby disappointment. Odds are good that we stopped by the sim message board to accept and dole out congratulations or commiserations. We spent some time that evening considering our next move. How did our colt come out of the race? Should we going to take a shot at the Middle Jewel? Could we even make the field of the Maryland race, given the field would be cut from 20 down to a more manageable 14? Or should we skip the Middle Jewel in favor of taking a fresh horse to the New Yorker? Or would we decide that while our colt is a fantastic miler, he just can’t get the classic distances?<\/P> If we decided to stay at the elite level, we wheeled our horse back for mid-May, and made plans for a trip to the Eastern Shore. For one, it would be an opportunity to get our horse in the record books by sweeping the first two legs of the Triple Jewel. For others, it was a chance to avenge an uncharacteristic loss in the Bluegrass. And for yet others, the race represented the first appearance in the big-time, as the field was shuffled up.<\/P> 1st: Awesome Force<\/STRONG><\/P> 2nd: Ataun<\/STRONG><\/P> 3rd: Peppet<\/STRONG> <\/P> After the Middle Jewel was over, once again trainers had decisions to make. As if asking a colt to go 10 panels isn’t difficult enough, now we had to decide if a mile and a half was within the realm of possibility. In a game where most trainers hold their 3yos in the first half the year to one race every 4-5 weeks, suddenly we were looking at 3 races within a 5-week span for a handful of colts. And so we said, let’s go for it. New York, here we come. <\/P> 1st: Awesome Force<\/STRONG><\/P> 2nd: Severe Warning<\/STRONG><\/P> 3rd: Ataun<\/STRONG><\/P> And now, the Triple Jewel series is over. Once again, we have no Triple Jewel winner. But we do have a new distinction – for the first time in sim history, one horse has taken home the trophy in both the Middle Jewel and New Yorker. <\/P> We as trainers can now take time to reflect on the journey our colts have taken. We can see how the new Derby Lock Prep system affected the final Derby field, and make adjustments to our training for the 2008 campaign. Even as our 3yos are settling in for a well-deserved rest before taking on the summer classics, or retraining for a turf or sprinting career, we are beginning to consider how we will get our juveniles to the big dance next year. <\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sim’s 2007 classic springtime begins, ends with all the drama <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}