Rachel Alexandra's public appearance Saturday at Monmouth in the $400,000 Lady's Secret lacks any inkling of drama, but has all the lure of a freak show. It's zero parts Hitchcock and all parts MTV "Jackass."
This one ought to be fun to watch. And I mean that in a very serious way.
The fabulous filly who won the Kentucky Oaks by 20-1/4 lengths, the Mother Goose by 19-1/4 and the Fleur de Lis most recently by 10-1/2 could not have hand-picked this Lady's Secret field herself and come up with a more explosive scenario. Rachel Alexandra could win this race by 20-1/2 lengths if jockey Calvin Borel chooses to one-up the Oaks margin.
It's not that the six rivals whom Rachel will face in the Lady's Secret are the worst horses ever assembled. It's that their running styles are all front-running speed, and the 1 1/8-miles distance of the race alone is enough to cull the curds from the whey in this group. Simply put, when they get tired of chasing, they're going to come to a crawl.
Stage Trick, third in the Grade 3 Obeah at Delaware Park last time out, has been on the lead in each of her last three starts and draws the rail Saturday. Queen Martha, from post 2 under hustling gate rider Joe Bravo, set scorching internal fractions in her U.S. debut on turf May 30 and is working like a sprinter in the mornings. Todd Pletcher counters with mile specialist Yes She's a Lady, full of sprint pedigree and a filly who has been on the lead in each of her last seven starts on the main track, tiring badly in the last four attempts. Fabulous Babe has raced exclusively in sprint races for the past year and twice won Oaklawn dashes this spring over Alexandria J. This Alexandra figures to be a bit tougher nut to crack, however.
Ask the Moon and Hark are hardly closing finishers either, but they figure to be the two horses most likely to be outrun early and have a chance to pick up the pieces if they can avoid the shrapnel Rachel Alexandra leaves behind her. Ask the Moon won the Lighthouse Stakes in wire-to-wire fashion last year at Monmouth, but last month dueled through slow fractions and still was beaten 23-1/4 lengths in the end after checking out. She did, however, once close a little ground at Meadowlands behind a fast pace to win an allowance race. Hark appears hopelessly overmatched, losing six straight starts, but trainer Ian Wilkes often instructs his riders to take back and make one run, and this filly once did close to win on the Ellis Park lawn last summer. Even still, most of her best efforts have been forwardly placed at shorter distances.
So, there you have it. Not a single challenger for Rachel in the Lady's Secret has been placed in a Grade 1 or Grade 2 stakes, or has won a graded stakes of any kind. That alone should set the win margin at five to eight lengths for a geared-down Rachel Alexandra. But when you add in the rubber-legged, feeble pursuit that we're bound to see, this win margin could get "tremendous machine-like" as Rachel romps down the Monmouth Park stretch. The fact that we're talking 1-1/8 miles and not 1-1/16 miles only adds to the digits in defeat that are likely for this hopeless six-pack. The rivals are 0-for-4 combined at the distance, whereas Rachel is merely 5-for-5.
The Lady's Secret is a race specifically made for Rachel Alexandra, no one disputes that. It's been an open campaign to move the race's date and increase the purse to lure her to Monmouth Park. Hats off to the folks who made it happen locally. It should be a fantastic showcase for the burgeoning summer meeting on the Jersey Shore. They deserve all the attention and accolades they get.
But what makes the potential of Saturday's race way cooler is what we might see. Maybe it's like watching "Jackass," where you can't wait to see a kid shoved down a flight of stairs in a shopping cart, or a skateboarder be lit on fire and fly into a lake. In this media and online empire in which we live, I have to admit there's a bit of a train-wreck fascination many of us have in seeing the bizarre.
I was nonchalant about the Lady's Secret Handicap a few weeks ago when it was announced. I knew it was going to be a made-for-Rachel victory and lack the drama. But once I saw the field after Wednesday's entries, I became titillated. By how far might she beat this bunch in these conditions?
We're a society of big events and records. I want to see Rachel Alexandra win Saturday's Lady's Secret by 31-1/4 lengths. She's already won the Oaks by 20-1/4. She might as well go after Secretariat's Belmont Stakes margin of 31 lengths now.
It's not likely Calvin Borel will press the accelerator even remotely hard enough to win by 31-1/4 lengths. As a day-in, day-out handicapper of horse races, I know that. But as a person guilty of human nature, I want to tune in Saturday to see a proverbial train wreck.
Win margins don't tell you the whole story, they never have. If Rachel Alexandra wins by just three lengths it won't be an indictment on her ability, nor if she wins by three city blocks will it tell us that she could even warm up Secretariat. But you can't deny that it would be 174 times cooler to see her run off the television screen than win by a ho-hum few lengths.
My good pal, broadcaster Bob Neumeier, likes to set over/unders for everything. Even "Neumy" would have a hard time putting the Lady's Secret win margin over/under below 20 lengths. I'm tempted to take the over. How far do you think Rachel might win this thing by?
Originally Posted on ESPN