So said Fyodor Dostoevsky in his masterpiece “Notes from Underground“:
With the ant-heap the respectable race of ants began and with the ant- heap they will probably end, which does the greatest credit to their perseverance and good sense. But man is a frivolous and incongruous creature, and perhaps, like a chess player, loves the process of the game, not the end of it.
Since the horses crossed the wire in the Belmont on Saturday afternoon, since the end of the “game” that is the Triple Crown season, I felt dread over having to fill out my NTRA All Ages poll.
The three-year-old poll was obvious, of course, at least as obvious as a poll of opinions can be. There was, as always, a lot of splitting hairs underneath…but Justify reigned supreme. Winning a Triple Crown makes that obvious.
But, his accomplishment gave me a crisis of conscience about my All Ages poll.
And who knows (there is no saying with certainty), perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained, which must always be expressed as a formula, as positive as twice two makes four, and such positiveness is not life, gentlemen, but is the beginning of death.
Leading into the Belmont Justify was not on my All Ages ballot, and I was seriously considering not putting him on there again. After all, one thing is positive: he hasn’t faced older horses. To be the best, you’ve got to beat the best — and on average, “the best” are older horses. Justify is a freak — but his only foes have been three-year-olds. How can I rank him better than the older horses if he hasn’t been tested against them yet?
With that question, the thought of putting Justify on my all-aged poll at all makes me sick to my stomach.
It makes sense to base my votes on things I know. Twice two makes four. Older horses are, on average, more developed, stronger, better than three-year-olds. Justify may be the exception, may be more developed than some top-class older horses, but how do we know, if he’s only ever beaten three-year-olds?
Anyway, man has always been afraid of this mathematical certainty, and I am afraid of it now. Granted that man does nothing but seek that mathematical certainty, he traverses oceans, sacrifices his life in the quest, but to succeed, really to find it, dreads, I assure you. He feels that when he has found it there will be nothing for him to look for. When workmen have finished their work they do at least receive their pay, they go to the tavern, then they are taken to the police-station — and there is occupation for a week. But where can man go? Anyway, one can observe a certain awkwardness about him when he has attained such objects. He loves the process of attaining, but does not quite like to have attained, and that, of course, is very absurd. In fact, man is a comical creature; there seems to be a kind of jest in it all.
But, on the other hand? My search for anything approximating mathematical certainty in the older division has eluded me. Since “six furlongs on the turf” is a little too specific a niche to be a division (sorry, Disco Partner!), the closest thing any division has to a clear leader is the open sprint division, with Mind Your Biscuits. His Golden Shaheen (G1) victory was a triumph. The Met Mile (G1) was a defeat in which he lost absolutely nothing: he missed by just a nose behind lone speed, going a distance longer than his best. He’s a superstar, but he hasn’t had an unprecedented kind of season. Heart to Heart has emerged best in the middle-distance turf division, Accelerate is the top of the handicap division…but how far above the rest do they loom?
They’ve had good seasons so far, but none of them have done anything that, if portrayed in a work of fiction, would cause you to roll your eyes and murmur that it couldn’t happen in real life.
Justify has.
If you tried to tell me a horse would go from unraced three-year-old to Triple Crown winner in under four months, I’d have told you that would never happen. If you handed me a book about a horse whose star rose so fast, I’d have scoffed at the implausible plot. Yet, I’ve now seen it happen with my own two eyes because Justify did it.
But yet mathematical certainty is after all, something insufferable. Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.
Is Justify better than the older horses? Will he beat older company later this year? We won’t know until he tries. In that sense, I’m still not quite happy about my choice to put Justify on my All Ages ballot at all.
But, he has changed my definition of what it’s possible for a racehorse to do, and has done that while racing a grueling Triple Crown schedule. I’m more certain of the fact that Justify has done something truly difficult than I am about anything in the older horse landscape right now. When so little elsewhere is stable maybe it’s not such a bad thing to break my rule, surrender begrudgingly to the wisdom of the Underground Man, and let twice two be five this time around.
Blinkers Off 