By T. D. Thornton
Dornoch (Good Magic) didn't get much respect heading into the GI Belmont Stakes, and his bandwagon wasn't exactly overburdened with supporters after his 17-1 victory over 'TDN Rising Star' Mindframe (Constitution), either.
On Saturday at Monmouth Park, bettors let the winner of the third leg of the Triple Crown go as the tepid 3.4-1 third choice in the seven-horse GI Haskell Stakes, believing with 4-5 certainty that a now-more-experienced Mindframe wouldn't, for a second straight race, allow Dornoch to claw back the lead in deep stretch like he did six weeks ago at Saratoga.
Yet that's exactly what happened. The colt with the higher perceived potential again yielded to the rival who was believed to have already peaked.
Beyond producing the same one-two result, there were enough tactical similarities between Dornoch's 1 1/4-length score over nine furlongs at the New Jersey shore and his half-length win over 10 furlongs at the Spa for the headlines to term the Haskell a “repeat” of the Belmont. But that's an oversimplified analogy that again shortchanges Dornoch in the respect department.
Dornoch's lack of gravitas within the 3-year-old pecking order is nothing new. As a full brother to 2023 GI Kentucky Derby winner Mage, this $325,000 KEESEP colt debuted at Saratoga last summer with outsized-and perhaps unfair-expectations.
He lost his first two starts, broke his maiden as a 6 1/2-length, favored winner at Keeneland, then prevailed in a pair of Grade II stakes in which he was widely deemed to have been the beneficiary of the competition either committing late-race blunders or not showing up at all.
In April, Dornoch flubbed his final Derby prep, then beat only half the field in the Derby itself.
But the star of trainer Danny Gargan's barn has since rebounded with back-to-back Grade I wins, eclipsing his big brother's post-Triple Crown career arc and establishing Dornoch as a no-drama, no-quit grinder.
Dornoch still doesn't resonate as a “Wow!” colt. But he is now firmly established as a speed-centric stayer who punches back well above his weight when accosted.
That's a dangerous combination entering the second half of a season in which a number of A-list contenders in the older male dirt route division have earned their reputations based on flash and panache, yet are light in terms of consistency and reliability.
Last Dec. 2, Dornoch won the nine-furlong, GII Remsen Stakes at Aqueduct by outgunning five rivals for the lead, taking mid-race pace pressure, swatting back several fresh challengers on the far turn, then brushing the inside rail in the stretch before re-surging late to snatch back the lead from 'TDN Rising Star' Sierra Leone, a $2.3-million Gun Runner colt who would end up being the next-out winner of the GII Risen Star Stakes and the eventual second-favorite in the Kentucky Derby.
At the time, the popular narrative was that even though both colts lost focus through the lane, Dornoch supposedly prevailed only because the lugging-in Sierra Leone wasn't fully cranked for prime time in only his second career start.
Over the winter, Gargan, who admitted Mage's little brother had a tendency to “goof off,” expressed a desire to teach Dornoch how to settle and rate from off the pace. He thought that opportunity would come in the colt's next start, the Mar. 2 GII Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream. But that race was decimated by four late scratches that left the race void of speed, and Gargan called a last-minute audible, telling jockey Luis Saez to instead send Dornoch straight to the front per usual.
Dornoch ended up administering a straightforward wiring over four weak rivals at 1-5 odds. Here too, his performance was panned, because he didn't beat any contenders of consequence and his Beyer Speed Figure took a one-point dip off the 91 he had earned in the Remsen.
Gargan still wanted to see how Dornoch could handle coming from a bit farther behind, and even though many trainers wouldn't think of trying so drastic a tactics change in a final race before the Kentucky Derby, Gargan instructed Saez to do just that in the Apr. 6 GI Toyota Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland.
Saez had a hard time trying to keep his colt under wraps around the first turn, and Dornoch, pelted with dirt kickback while hemmed midpack at the rail for most of his trip, then only had mild response and ran up on the heels of a rival when asked for late-race response. The winner, Sierra Leone, blew by in upper stretch and Dornoch ended up a punchless fourth.
Gargan then admitted he had made a mistake, and vowed to let Dornoch revert to doing as he liked out of the gate, which meant rolling to the lead in the Derby and taking the field as far as he could on the front end.
Then the post position gods intervened and buried Dornoch in the dreaded one hole, a gate placement in the 20-horse Derby that has not produced a winner since Ferdinand in 1986.
On the first Saturday in May, Dornoch got bumped and brushed at the break, then never settled while pinned inside. He launched into a decent bid coming free from cover on the far turn, then checked hard when a hole in the pack of contenders closed turning for home. He had some mild interest in upper stretch but encountered more roughhousing, and Saez didn't hammer on Dornoch when it became apparent tenth place was the best he'd be able to attain in the Derby.
Dornoch wins the GI Belmont Stakes | Sarah Andrew
If you looked at Dornoch's chances in the Belmont Stakes through the lens that he had been forced well out of his comfort zone in two consecutive races after not getting much out of that cakewalk win in his first start at age three, you were rewarded with that juicy 17-1 overlay in Saratoga's truncated (from 12 furlongs to 10) version of the third leg of the Triple Crown.
From post six in the Belmont Stakes, Dornoch put outside pressure on rail-drawn GI Preakness Stakes upsetter Seize the Grey (Arrogate), took over on the far turn, then was under siege and under the whip at the head of the lane with Mindframe drawing dead aim.
Admirably and somewhat unexpectedly, Dornoch dug in and sparred hard, while Mindframe came unglued for a few strides and couldn't seal the deal. Mindframe re-rallied belatedly in the shadow of the wire, but Dornoch had built up enough of a cushion to win by a diminishing margin.
By capturing the Belmont, Dornoch had beaten both the winners of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness-Mystik Dan (Goldencents) and Seize the Grey-plus his arch-rival, Sierra Leone (who was third), and the up-and-coming Mindframe.
Yet the betting public still believed Dornoch had more to prove in the Haskell, emphatically backing Mindframe to odds-on favoritism while installing 'TDN Rising Star' Timberlake (Into Mischief) as the second choice off a nearly four-month layoff.
Dornoch broke alertly from post one while Mindframe stumbled and was bumped coming out of gate six. The stutter-step start alone was not Mindframe's undoing, as Irad Ortiz, Jr. recovered him well enough to place Mindframe fourth down along the inside. But the difference in their breaks enabled Dornoch to establish command without pressure through an opening quarter in :23.32, and once the field sorted itself out onto the backstretch run, Saez expertly backed down the second quarter-mile split to a waltzing :24.76.
Quickening to :23.97 for the third quarter, Dornoch got double-teamed three-eighths out, first by Timberlake and then the full-of-steam, four-deep Mindframe. Timberlake edged in front only for an instant, but Midframe powered past with what looked to be the winning Haskell move 2 1/2 furlongs from the wire.
Mindframe held that lead to the three-sixteenths marker through a fourth quarter-mile split of :25.23, yet Dornoch cut the corner closest to the rail under stern right-handed encouragement and simply wouldn't give up.
At the same time that Dornoch was responding to all-out rousing, Mindframe was still being hand-ridden, and as he drifted out to the five path, Mindframe disengaged like a ship adrift.
Ortiz resorted to belated stick work on alternating sides, but his efforts yielded more lateral movement than forward progress from Mindframe.
Dornoch kept Mindframe at bay through a final furlong clocked in a moderate :13.03.
So how fast was Dornoch's Haskell? The answer depends upon whether you prefer raw final times or Beyer Speed Figures, which take into account class-related par times while also factoring in how the track was playing on that particular day.
Dornoch's final time of 1:50.31 was the slowest Haskell since Authentic ran 1:50.45 in 2020. In fact, the only other sub-1:50 clocking in the past decade was when Dornoch's sire, Good Magic, stopped the timer in 1:50.01 in 2018.
But Dornoch's assigned Beyer of 103 equates to the fastest figure for the Haskell since American Pharoah ripped through nine furlongs with a 109 Beyer in 2015.
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