Palace Malice

[Calzone Lord]

After his unlikely impression of Groovy with the blinkers in the Kentucky Derby ... you have to give him some credit (and the closers in the Belmont Stakes much fault) for living out the distance and winning.

Palace Malice, despite racing wide the entire way around the first turn, was 1.5 lengths off of a 1:10.95 opening six furlong clocking.

Of course, the (correct) rule of thumb is that one second equals six lengths. So, Palace Malice ran his opening six furlongs in 1:11.20 to the hundredth.

You have to go all the way back to the great Bold Forbes in 1976, in order to find a horse who ran 1:11.20 or faster in the first six furlongs, while winning the Belmont Stakes.

One must also note, that Bold Forbes 1:11.20 was a rounded down approximation time, and could have been anything from 1:11.20 through 1:11.39 seconds.

It's very likely that Palace Malice ran the fastest opening six furlongs of any Belmont Stakes winner since Secretariat in 1973.

One can say that the closers were up against a speed biased track, just as they did the year Jazil won the Belmont from last-to-first.

However, Jazil got one hell of a setup when he swept past Haskell hero Bluegrass Cat...but he didn't get a setup quite like this year.

If anyone is curious how Belmont closers aided by a setup have performed in subsequent races, it's beyond brutal. I posted it a week or two ago.

As 3-year-olds mature and develop, they will carry their speed further. The weights come down from 126lbs. The field sizes reduce. Trainers become less willing to try and stretch-out a horse who figures poorly suited for the distance. Things get harder for those who are tactical speed deficient.

Divisional races start looking more and more like the Preakness, and less and less like the kind of sensational pace meltdowns the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes were.

And tell me all you want about how 'The Belmont wasn't a true pace meltdown because the closers weren't successful' ... from a fractional standpoint ... in the realm of Belmont Stakes past, it was an all-time pace meltdown.