“I pressed the button,” Jim Crowley said after finishing fourth aboard Baaeed in the Champion Stakes on Saturday, “and it just wasn’t there.”
It was a simple elegy for what will still be remembered as an outstanding career, one that saw Baaeed carry all before him until this first defeat in 11 starts. But there was no denying the bitter disappointment, both for the colt’s connections and many thousands of fans in the stands, that he will not retire to stud as an unbeaten champion.
