The Case for Shared Belief

by Alan Carasso

Yes. I voted for Shared Belief for Horse of the Year. I know–blasphemy. Well, before you scream and shout or flip the page, hear me out. 

As an Eclipse Award voter (by the way, where and who are the 15 who didn’t return theirs?), I see it as my duty to formulate my opinions around horse competitions. So, I put horses in a given category in a starting gate of sorts, spring the latch and decide which is the best, i.e. most gifted, most talented–you know, best. Winners, at least to my way of thinking, are not determined by who is most popular, who did the most for our sport, who had the longest season. At the end of the day, I think these are far less relevant to the discussion than the simpler, yet maybe more complicated question: who was best? 

In addressing my Horse of the Year vote, let me say at the outset that, based on their accomplishments, Bayern, California Chrome and Main Sequence are each infinitely qualified finalists. I realized that my vote for Shared Belief would be “unpopular” or “less popular” or “against the grain,” but none of those reasons is enough to act as a deterrent. I decided to vote my conscience and did so through what I believe to be a sound thought process. 

I could not and would not rule any horse out of consideration based on the length of their campaign. In fact, I readily voted for Palace Malice in spite of his having made just the five starts. So, just because Shared Belief was forced to miss the Triple Crown (yes, folks, Hollendorfer really was telling us the true story), didn’t mean that he couldn’t finish the year at the head of the class. A very good class. I digress. 

Sure he rolled those Golden Gate allowance rivals, as he should have, further–as some would argue–enhancing his credentials as a superior synthetic animal. This line of thinking is hardly flawed. After all, his three wins at two came on the Tapeta/Cushion Track. Of course, he had his detractors when it came time to return to stakes company. Will he handle conventional dirt? Maybe nine furlongs is too far for him? Well, he answered those naysayers with a fair bit of authority in the GII Los Alamitos Derby, winning off as much the best. 

From there, Hollendorfer had a decision to make on whether to ship out of town for a race like the GI Haskell Invitational or the GI Travers S., but instead, he rolled the dice and decided to take on older horses in the GI Pacific Classic, a daring, but not unprecedented move for a 3-year-old at that point of the season. Even Mike Smith, theretofore the regular jockey of Game on Dude, took off that grizzled veteran to guide Shared Belief–a lofty endorsement. It was not a super easy trip at Del Mar that Sunday afternoon, as he was further off the pace than he’d been before. But he adapted, came with a push-button and sweeping move and charged home a convincing winner. 

With another high-profile and big-money opportunity available in the $1-million GII Pennsylvania Derby–which of course proved to be the destination for California Chrome–Shared Belief instead got an extra week of rest and lined up against elders for a second straight time in the GI Awesome Again S. at Santa Anita. What happened there is well documented. The Beyer Speed Figure earned for his razor-thin defeat of the capitalistic Fed Biz was a modest 101. Yet, had he been able to save ground–any ground at all–that number could have looked much more like 105-108, maybe even 110, depending on just how much savings there was and the margin of victory anywhere from two to seven lengths. 

And with that perfect 7-for-7 record intact, it was on to the Classic. The 3-year-olds were expected to dominate. And so it was. Yet the sophomore the betting public landed on did not prove victorious, having been effectively stripped of his chance to give his best effort by that incident out of the gate. Many horses would have called it a day, yet Shared Belief tried every step of the way and finished fourth, ahead of the GI Belmont S. and Jockey Club Gold Cup winner, ahead of the GI Travers S. hero, ahead of the GI Gold Cup at Santa Anita victor and the GI Whitney H. conqueror. In front of him were Bayern, who it could be argued was aided by the track; and California Chrome, who had things very much his way, not a straw in his path, yet couldn’t quite get it done. Had he found that little bit extra, this discussion would be moot. 

Most thought the season was over, but Art Sherman acted pre-emptively and pointed California Chrome for the GI Hollywood Derby in an attempt to a) generate some support for the Eclipse Award and b) to perhaps open some doors for 2015. It was a daring move, insofar as the turf was a question mark, but the lanky chestnut handled it with aplomb and with authority, even if the speed figure was unimpressive. 

The ball was now in the court of the Shared Belief camp, and a few works not long after the Breeders’ Cup suggested there was something in the offing. That something was the GI Malibu S., the final top-level event restricted to 3-year-olds. The task would not be an easy one–cutting back from 10 furlongs to seven is not simple, by definition. And the field was a good one, including a quartet of horses from Bob Baffert, trainer of Bayern. When one of those was scratched on raceday, it left another as the controlling speed and likely forced Hollendorfer and team to go back to the drawing board. Instead of being able to lay off the pace and make a run, Shared Belief was ridden closer to the front, and despite being out of his element, still got the job done. Though neither the winning margin nor speed figure (surprising given the raw time of 1:20.69) was great, he had done enough in my mind to make me say, ‘that is the best horse in training. That is the Horse of the Year.’ 

Shared Belief was brilliant going short and going long, was the only member of the division to defeat older horses twice (California Chrome faced elders just once) and overcame a tremendous amount of adversity on multiple occasions and, who knows, if not for the incident at the start of the Classic might be undefeated. I cannot say with any amount of certainty that he would have won; I can freely say that he was certainly deprived of his best chance to do so. 

I give Bayern and his connections credit for an exceptionally ambitious campaign in which he was awesome much or most of the time, but was also very ordinary when things didn’t go just right. California Chrome manhandled his rivals for the first half of the year, but didn’t get back to the win column until he defeated a filly at Del Mar. And Main Sequence did all that was asked of him, albeit against competition that was probably inferior on balance when compared to one of the deepest collections of 3-year-olds since Curlin, Street Sense and Hard Spun back in 2007. 

So, crazy and blasphemous and incredulous as it may seem, this is how I voted. I’ll be surprised if more than 10% of my fellow voters agreed. I’m OK with that. I knew someone was going to have to be excluded from the Horse of the Year ballot and in my gut, I anticipated it would be him. I look forward to what he–and, happily, Bayern and California Chrome and Main Sequence–have to offer in 2015. 

Maybe we’ll meet again at this place same time next year. 

But, like it or not, Shared Belief was my Horse of the Year for 2014.