Two Hall of Fame trainers -- one with a horse that started, the other with one that didn't -- took swipes at the 119th running of the Preakness yesterday, saying the time was slow and the competition uninspiring.
"It didn't impress me any," said Charlie Whittingham, who ran one horse, Numerous, in the Preakness, and saved another one, Kentucky Derby runner-up Strodes Creek, for the June 11 Belmont Stakes.
"None of those horses scare me. I think if I had run Strodes Creek, it would have been no contest. He's a bigger, stronger horse and he can lay up there [near the pace] if he has to."
Tabasco Cat defeated Kentucky Derby winner Go For Gin by three-quarters of a length, running the mile and three-sixteenths in 1 minute, 56 2/5 seconds, the second-slowest time in 20 years.
Jimmy Croll, who will be inducted into racing's Hall of Fame in August, owns and trains beaten Kentucky Derby favorite Holy Bull. He said that Saturday's Preakness "was nothing to write home about.
"You had the two horses at the wire and the rest nowhere. At the quarter pole, Go For Gin looked like a 1-2 shot and couldn't make it. Tabasco Cat out-gamed him. But the time was slow and it looked to me like neither one of them wanted to go much farther."
Croll said that if he had started Holy Bull "and he had run back to his races in the Florida Derby and Blue Grass Stakes, then he would have won the Preakness. As it was, I'm glad I skipped the race and gave him more time."
Holy Bull, who worked six furlongs in 1:11 yesterday at Monmouth Park, is scheduled to race a week from today in the $500,000 Metropolitan Mile at Belmont Park. Croll said it's only "a remote possibility" that the horse will start in the Belmont Stakes.
New York Racing Association officials who were at Pimlico Race Course yesterday said they expect a field of seven or eight for the third leg of the Triple Crown.
Three Preakness starters, one fewer than last year, are expected to go in the Belmont. They are Tabasco Cat, Go For Gin and Numerous.
Rounding out the possible Belmont field are Strodes Creek; fourth-place Kentucky Derby finisher Brocco; Amathos, a colt owned by Sheik Mohammed al Maktoum and trained by Bill Mott; Copper Mount, a New York-bred son of Cormorant, who is also the sire of Go For Gin; possibly Ulises, the last-place Kentucky Derby finisher; and a European horse from the stable of Andre Fabre.
