The Week in Review: Justify… Seattle Slew Redux

I get it, there is no such thing as horse reincarnation. Then again…

Justify (Scat Daddy) is Seattle Slew. He may look different, he may have been born 41 years and 41 days after the 1977 Triple Crown winner. Slew has come back to life in the form of Justify. Of this, I am reasonably sure.

First, they are the only two undefeated horses to have won the Triple Crown. But it's more than that. They way the won the Triple Crown is eerily similar, with the same running style and in races that look like mirror images of one another. They did not win with the sheer power of Secretariat, the grind-it-out-refuse-to-lose style of Affirmed or with the dominance that American Pharoah (Pioneerof the Nile) showed in the GI Preakness S. or GI Belmont S. Slew and Justify did it the same way, with the ability to cruise along at a high speed, keep going and refuse to let anyone get by them.

In the 1977 Kentucky Derby, Seattle Slew was pressed by a horse named For the Moment. The fractions were :23 and :45 4/5 and he was second by a head after a half-mile. He shook off that longshot and then held off Run Dusty Run to win by 1 3/4 lengths.

Sound familiar?

Justify got caught up in a hot pace with Promises Fulfilled (Shackleford), sizzled through fractions of :22 1/5 and :45 3/5, bid him adieu and kept cruising along. Good Magic (Curlin) made a run, but was never going to catch Justify, who won 2 1/2 lengths.

In the 1977 Preakness, Cormorant was the thorn in Slew's side. He battled him through fractions of :22 3/5 and :45 3/5 and then Slew did his thing. He looked that horse in the eye, said goodbye and had enough in the tank to hold off Iron Constitution to win by 1 1/2 lengths.

41 years later, Good Magic played the role of Cormorant. He did everything he could to take the fight to Justify early, but it didn't work. A good horse, Good Magic wouldn't go away easily, but eventually he did and Justify had enough left to hold off the late runs of Bravazo (Awesome Again) and Tenfold (Curlin). He won by a half-length.

Slew's Belmont and Justify's Belmont are virtually the same race. Just as Mike Smith knew it was to his advantage to use Justify's speed as a weapon Saturday, Jean Cruguet employed the same strategy in 1977. He let his horse jump out of the gate and likely thought that no other jockey would dare go after his horse and blow any chance they had of winning. He led every step of the way, loping along in fractions of :48 2/5 and 1:14. With the race never really in doubt, he just kept clicking off one steady quarter after another and won by four.

Smith rode the exact same race. He asked Justify just enough out of the gate to take control and then slowed the pace down. His half was :48 and the three-quarters went in 1:13 1/5. The opponents would make their run, but Justify kept them all at bay. More steady than spectacular, he maintained control, never seemed pressured and won by a comfortable 1 3/4 lengths.

In one area, Slew comes out on top. He won his three races by a combined 7 1/4 lengths. Justify's combined margin of victory was 4 3/4 lengths. And in Justify's Preakness, it did appear for an instant that he might get caught. But he didn't. Both horses had the unbeatable combination of a high cruising speed and the stamina to keep going and going and hold off their challengers.

“He is talented like Seattle Slew, for sure,” said Angel Cordero Jr., who rode Slew in his last four starts. “Justify has the speed and the acceleration and the stamina. He's a good horse. I knew before the Derby he was special, a very good horse. It's hard to compare horses. I just admire both of them. I think Slew was a little quicker than him but they both have a lot of speed and a lot of stamina when it counts. I don't see any weakness with Justify and I didn't see any weakness with Seattle Slew either.”

Slew kept going at four and in the 1978 GI Marlboro Cup Handicap became the only Triple Crown winner to beat a Triple Crown winner, defeating Affirmed by three lengths. We're probably not going to see Justify at four, so Slew will go down in history having had the more complete career. But both have joined racing's most exclusive club, one that includes only the greatest among the greats. And they got there the same way, with speed, talent, stamina, flare and determination.

What Do I Know?

After Justify won his first race in February, someone wrote the following in this publication: “Baffert is talking about pointing Justify (Scat Daddy) to the GI Kentucky Derby, and here are my two cents: forget about it.”

That person was me.

I'm still wiping the egg off my face–there's an awful lot of it. Not only did he win the Kentucky Derby, Justify won the Triple Crown. My thinking was that taking a horse who had broken his maiden on Feb. 18 and asking him to win the Kentucky Derby was not only impossible but could easily backfire and compromise the rest of his career.

I wrote: “But what Baffert and the ownership group cannot overlook are the risks, and they are big ones. The Kentucky Derby is the toughest race in America and it chews up and spits out horses–experienced horses who have raced six, seven, eight times, who have not been rushed into the race and started as 2-year-olds. With any horse coming into the race 11 weeks after his debut and in his third lifetime start you're taking a huge chance that they'll never again be the same. Is it worth the risk?”

Well, yes, it was. The horse is now a Triple Crown winner and worth something north of $60 million And I promise that, from now on, I'll leave the training decisions to the white-haired guy who's in the Hall of Fame.