Finally, with a clean shot at the line under Irad Ortiz, Jr. – and exactly zero rugby scrums to wrestle through at the break, up the backstretch, or coming out of the final turn – Renegade made his redemptive victory over Commandant in Saturday’s $500,000 Jim Dandy look rather easy. Easily the most entertaining mystery of the race was that, at post time, the track money was still mysteriously in love with Commandant – at 1-1, even money – who placed, and not especially remarkably so.
The paradigm of Saratoga’s infamous “speed-loving” biased track, and its legend of being the “graveyard of champions,” were precisely reversed. The two deep closers did their thing and won; the equine athletes weren’t fooled. The people were.
In the race’s lone and barely moderate surprise, Silent Tactic finished somewhat brightly in show, leaving Jose Ortiz and Chip Honcho, the nominal speed unit, to digest the fact that they finished fourth behind at least one horse that they theoretically should have beaten. As expected, Asked and Answered brought up the rear.
Renegade’s victory in the Grade 2 Travers prep augurs well for the Pletcher colt in Saratoga’s far larger and more serious back-to-school race at the end of August, but for the moment, the win also brought a solid measure of redemption to trainer Todd Pletcher, who had, with what must have been superhuman patience, delivered pretty much constant explanations to a doubting press – and to the doubting NYRA who slated Renegade second-best in the morning line – that Renegade had, in fact, run through serial traffic battles in both his Triple Crown races but still managed to deliver quite an heroic Belmont effort that put him in show.
Pletcher’s overarching point was that, in May and in June, despite really aggressive traffic problems, Renegade transformed potential Triple Crown disasters into quite decent placing races. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the trainer’s own detailed conditioning over the two months since the Belmont paid off. For his part, Renegade repaid that in spades at Saratoga on the afternoon, and in the very two minutes, that it mattered for him to do so.
Given all that more or less in plain view over the two months since the Belmont, the mystery of the pre-race magnetism of the Commandment bandwagon – upon which notable pundits, the NYRA morning line oddsmakers, and on race day right down to the minute of post time, the track money itself all so gladly jumped – remains.
With the odds as tight and low as they were for the favorites in this oddly packed, tiny field, the payouts were predictably dismal: Renegade paid $4.72 on a $2 bet; Commandant, heading out of the gate at even money, paid a bleak $2.46 in place; and Silent Tactic paid a very nearly as sad $2.74 on a $2 show bet. There was only moderate relief in the exotics: a $1 exacta paid $4.72, and a $0.50 trifecta paid a flat $10.00.
In the cold hard light of the sport itself, the victory brought a measure of redemption to the equine athlete as well, chalking up another win against his chief rival Commandant. The Travers and presumably Golden Tempo await both Renegade and Commandant with open arms, and that white-hot rematch of Triple-Crown veterans is, for the sport, arguably the best result of all. There are plenty of good Oklahoma-track works that will be sweated out over the next four weeks, but at the moment, with this mile-and-an-eighth put swiftly behind him, the embattled Renegade claims the edge.