Winning The Belmont

With all 12 jocks having good reason to question the fitness of their mounts, can we expect the Belmont pace to be crawling early? And, would such a scenario set up perfectly for the exceptionally talented horse who can wing along with less effort due to efficient stride, fluidity and natural athletic ability. That horse in here of course is Animal Kingdom, and perhaps everyone is getting a sense of that, hence AK as the chalk favorite.

Obviously a crawling pace plays right into the hands of the AK connections, and possibly also of Shakelford. Would we expect some of these trainers or even the smarter jocks to set out to press this year's Belmont pace???

Normal scenario this would be for the fitter Mucho Macho Man, due to superior track work--by all accounts--to sit back, measure the pace and then increase the pace enough so that AK and his fellow pretenders need expend themselves before hitting the 3f pole. Would MMM's trainer figure this?-- and bless her heart I hope she wins, but doubt the lady that trains MMM will use her superior training to advantage, or, she'll do something else silly to compromise the horse such as shoeing two weeks out from the race instead of a week out. Be interesting how those polyflexes work on a deep sandy surface! Mucho is the enigma here with the hot Belmont jock.

Nehro, and, despite several experts picking against him, has the one superior trainer in this field. Will Asmussen press the pace a bit, and does his horse have this trained into him? If so, the final Qs--can AK and Shakelford keep up for 1.5 miles?
Training:
Thurs. June 9: rain coming and after 3 days of tack work we're still trying to keep the big fellow interested, and so, riderless paddock speed work, that went well considering the wet bulb conditions. The horse was into running this day instead of leading likely due to the heat. Several 4f spurts slightly under all out speed. Nice workout. Also first day of working on the horse trailer to solve the mechanical problems.