The Travers was shaping up to be the race of the summer when the winners of the three Triple Crown Races—Orb, Oxbow , and Palace Malice—all pointed to it. Without a clear divisional leader, one of those three might have sealed up the three-year-old championship with a win.

Oxbow didn’t make it to the race; sidelined by injury after the Haskell Invitational at Monmouth Park last month, he headed home to Calumet Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, instead, leaving his trainer D. Wayne Lukas, a former basketball coach, to rely on his bench, in the form of a horse named Will Take Charge, eighth in the Kentucky Derby, seventh in the Preakness, tenth in the Belmont.