Now that the Travers is done, and Forte's more than slightly disappointing run in it is being digested, it's an apt moment in the horse's career to examine his style and predilections as he has shown them in this third year of life. The reason that this is such a good opportunity is that the superbly talented athlete, himself, is at a fork in the road when we could fairly say his award-winning trainer, Todd Pletcher and his owners are taking the time to think about the next steps.

It's axiomatic in training horses that a trainer will take careful, small steps before building up to place this or that larger challenge in front of any athlete in his or her care. It's about figuring out who that racer is. The last thing anybody in racing wants to do is to waste time and energy training a sprinter for the Belmont, or vice versa, attempting to put a budding Seattle Slew in a mile sprint.

And yet: Forte was perfectly positioned for the Travers. His win in the Jim Dandy with blinkers on seemed just the ticket, and the proof everybody was looking for that he had at last settled down and found himself again, after a long lapse since his stellar runs during his second year.

In Forte's case, we do now know that, although he had been training quite well at Saratoga, he seemed not to like the somewhat muddy track presented to him by the Travers, and there are several reasons that can be in play for that. First, Forte's running style: The horse has a way of leaving himself too much to do in the last furlongs, as he did in the Belmont, though his bounce back to place in that very long, tough race was admirably strong. But his stamina is not the point here, rather, it's what happens to any horse that is not a front runner on a muddy track, and that is that they get pelted in the face and chest with all manner of mudballs thrown up by the horses blasting through the slop in front of them. Some horses it bothers, and some it doesn’t. It bothered Forte.