The Belmont lost its feel-good story line when Barrington owner-breeder Jim Tafel and trainer Carl Nafzger decided against trying to avenge Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense’s photo-finish loss to Curlin in the Preakness.
Tafel is an 83-year-old poster boy for the sport of racing, a self-made man who started buying, and eventually breeding, thoroughbreds in the 1980s.
Contrast Tafel’s background and success story with those of the owners of Curlin and Rags to Riches, the two horses with the highest profiles in Saturday’s Belmont. Street Sense is a homemade horse that brought Tafel happiness, while Curlin and Rags to Riches belong to owners who succeeded in buying happiness.
The inappropriately named filly Rags to Riches was purchased at auction as a yearling for $1.9 million by two of the wealthiest men in racing, mega-millionaires Michael Tabor of Monte Carlo and Derrick Smith of Barbados.
While Tabor and Smith bought their superstar at the Keeneland’s September yearling sale, Jess Jackson, Satish Sanan and George Bolton shelled out a reported $3.5 million to purchase an 80 percent interest in Curlin from Kentucky lawyers Shirley Cunningham Jr. and William Gallion after he was a landslide winner of his first race in February at Gulfstream Park.
A case can be made that Jackson and Sanan deserve an outstanding horse like Curlin because they have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in horses over the years and have been bilked and defrauded in some of their investments. Because they have been victims of chicanery, both have become two of the sport’s strongest advocates for transparency at horse auctions.
Ironically, their new partners, Cunningham and Gallion, have had their law licenses suspended by the Kentucky Supreme Court after a circuit court judge found that they and another lawyer had defrauded 400 clients in a class action lawsuit in a fen-phen diet drug case.
The great differences that distinguish the owner-breeder of Street Sense from the owners of Curlin and Rags to Riches carry over to the trainers they employ.
Tafel and Street Sense’s trainer, 65-year-old Nafzger, have been together for nearly 25 years. In 2006 Nafzger cut back his stable considerably and now is the trainer of record for 12 horses, working exclusively for Tafel and Bentley Smith, another client dating back to the early 1980s.
In sharp contrast to this small boutique arrangement, Curlin’s trainer, Steve Asmussen, and Rags to Riches’ trainer, Todd Pletcher, have conglomerate style stables of 200 horses based at several locations across the country.
While Nafzger has a squeaky clean record, Asmussen and Pletcher both have served suspensions recently.
Asmussen paid a $2,500 fine and began serving a six-month suspension last July after an eighth-place finisher in a March 2006 race at Evangeline Downs in Louisiana tested positive for a mepivacine, an anesthetic that can dull pain and has a high potential for affecting performance. One of Pletcher’s horses tested positive for the same drug after winning a 2004 race at Saratoga, but he got off with a $3,000 fine and a 45-day suspension.
Undeniably, Asmussen and Pletcher are two of the world’s best trainers and Curlin and Rags to Riches give the Belmont two of America’s finest horses but, because of the Tafel/Nafzger connection, the perfect story line for Saturday’s Belmont would have Street Sense going for the Triple Crown.
Neil Milbert’s Belmont analysis
Saturday’s 139th running of the 1 1/2 -mile Belmont Stakes
Listed in handicap order %% PP HORSE JOCKEY TRAINER ODDS COMMENT
7 Rags to Riches John Velazquez Todd Pletcher 3-1 America’s finest filly
6 Hard Spun Garrett Gomez Larry Jones 5-2 Breeding says he can
3 Curlin Robby Albarado Steve Asmussen 6-5 Superstar in Preakness
5 Slew’s Tizzy Rafael Bejarano Greg Fox 20-1 Last 2 were terrific
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4 C P West Edgar Prado Nick Zito 12-1 Might hit the board
2 Tiago Mike Smith John Shirreffs 10-1 California’s top colt
1 Imawildandcrazyguy Mark Guidry Bill Kaplan 20-1 0-for-7 in stakes races
Odds are New York Racing Association morning line %%
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