By a bare half-length, with Bravazo and Tenfold closing on him, Justify eked out an expected 2018 Preakness win in the fog on a very wet track at Pimlico on Saturday afternoon, bringing his elated trainer, Bob Baffert into the Preakness winners’ circle for a record seventh time. He paid $2.80 to win. In a thrilling last-furlong surge, relative longshot Bravazo edged out Tenfold to place, paying $7.60 on the nose. Tenfold showed, paying $6.80.
Justify and his nearest odds rival, Good Magic, pulled away from the field on the backstretch, and the race did for those few cliff-hanging furlongs, and through the far turn, look as if it would become a world-beating match race, with no one else in sight. But Justify, in his now-patented speed-horse mode, took all the gas out of Good Magic, causing the second-favorite to fade to fourth in the last furlong under Bravazo’s and Tenfold’s bold attack. The very game place and show horses brought the players of exotics some relief.
It will be worth remembering in three weeks’ time, as Justify faces the daunting mile-and-a-half of Belmont, that he did look as if he was fading in the last few strides under the relentless Bravazo. Had this race been the Belmont, rather than the Preakness at a mile-and-three-sixteenths, it’s doubtful that Pimlico’s painters would be painting Justify’s colors on the cupola of Pimlico at this writing, as is the Maryland gesture to the Preakness winner.
For his part, Justify’s relieved Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith admitted that he felt his horse tiring under him but added, “It was a good kind of tired.” Good enough, in other words, to hang on as a ragingly powerful Bravazo devoured Justify’s half-length win by the nanosecond. Just another few strides would have had Justify in second place.
Asked what he’s planning for his horse in the next three weeks, an also-relieved Bob Baffert said, “We’re gonna do exactly what we did before this. It was a hard race for him, probably the hardest he’s had.”
