America waits. There have been six presidents since the Triple Crown was last achieved with Affirmed’s victory in the Belmont Stakes under an 18-year-old Steve Cauthen in 1978. There have also been 12 horses who tried to complete the treble after winning the first two legs but failed.
If the 36 years of waiting for another Triple Crown is not enough, then think how Victor Espinoza must feel.
After winning the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes on California Chrome, the Mexican rider will try to deliver the coup de grace at Belmont Park on Saturday that will earn him eternal adulation. In the hurly burly of what will be one of the most watched sporting events in America in 2014, good things indeed can come to those who wait.
Too often down the years jockeys – through inexperience, desperation or simply a lack of coolheadedness – have gone for home too early at Belmont Park, the longest dirt racetrack in North America.
There have been 33 horses that have been eligible to win the Triple Crown, and of the 11 who succeeded, led by inaugural winner Sir Barton in 1919, the factors that contributed to the defeat of the rest are legion.
The heavy, leg-wearying dirt at the course known as the “Big Sandy”, the increase in distance to 2,400 metres from the 2,000 metres of the Kentucky Derby and the 1,900 metres of the Preakness, and the unfamiliar surroundings of the New York racecourse make fools of many riders.
Even the greatest have come unstuck. Ron Turcotte won five Triple Crown races in 1972 and 1973 when first Riva Ridge and then the legendary Secretariat carried him through two glorious seasons right to the hallowed gates of the Hall Of Fame.
Many may argue that partnering Secretariat to snap a 25-year Triple Crown drought in the 1973 Belmont Stakes was akin to riding a race in a sedan chair, such was his authority when cantering all over his rivals to win by a scarcely believable 31 lengths.
With more than 3,000 career victories, Turcotte was one of the best, but he certainly learnt how to win the Belmont Stakes the hard way.
It was in 1965, when he was reeled in by Johnny Sellers and Hail To All after he had led in the stretch aboard the Preakness winner Tom Rolfe, that he felt he finally understood.
“I moved a little bit too soon,” the 72-year-old Canadian said this week. “I made for home at the 16th pole and I got up on the wire, so that was my fault in the sense that I blew the race. The horse didn’t lose the race, I lost the race.
“So I’ve seen many riders do exactly what [jockey] Edgar Prado says: they move at the five-eighth pole instead of the three-eighths pole.
“They are same coloured poles and they are located in the same place. There’s a mile track where the three-eighth pole is, but that is the five-eighth pole at Belmont.”
Espinoza has hardly covered himself in glory with his three rides in the final leg of American sport’s most internationally accessible triptych.
To give Espinoza credit, he started well. The 42-year-old rider was a remote second on AP Valentine for his first ride in 2001, when Point Given won by an imposing 12-and-a-quarter lengths.
To shoot him down, it was the ride a year later on Triple Crown-seeking War Emblem, who stumbled out of the gates to finish eighth, that has blemished a record that would all be forgotten with a win on California Chrome. Sacred Light’s ninth of 12 in 2006 was the last time he rode in the final chapter of the series.
Espinoza has been flawless, however, not only in his complete understanding of California Chrome, who he has guided to six consecutive victories, but also with the way he has negotiated his mount through the first two stanzas of this tri-partite epic.
Espinoza placed California Chrome in precisely the right positions both at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May and at Pimlico two weeks ago. After the Preakness Espinoza said he was more tired mentally than physically, as he had to continually recalculate tactics throughout the race.
California Chrome clearly has the ability to travel through his races smoothly enough to hold position. He has shown that he has the raw speed to put his wins to bed at the right times.
He illustrated with his bump of Social Inclusion, his main rival in the Preakness, that he also possesses the brawn needed if Saturday’s race becomes a slowly-run street fight that turns in to a bitter sprint to the wire.
As with virtually every horse that has tried to embroider their wins in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, it is only something going catastrophically wrong, or a failure to last the distance, that will beat California Chrome. That is the view according to Cauthen, who intends to join Turcotte and Jean Cruguet, the great Seattle Slew’s jockey, at Belmont to sign autographs.
“It’s fun to watch because it reminds me a lot of Affirmed,” Cauthen said.
“California Chrome can go to the front, sit second, third or fourth. The horse seems to settle wherever Espinoza wants him, and he can pick up in an instant when he asks him, like he did on the turn at Pimlico when Social Inclusion challenged on the outside. It looked like he didn’t even have to ask him, the horse just did it on his own, and that’s how Affirmed was.
“In that respect I think he’s ready. He’s got all the talent. It’s just a question of whether he can really stay a mile and a half. He looks like a freak horse and he can probably do things that are beyond his breeding.”
In many respects, California Chrome has already outperformed his lowly breeding. His two owners bought a mare for US$8,000 (Dh29,384) and sent her to Lucky Pulpit for just $2,500. There are several aspects to his lineage that suggest California Chrome may well last the 12 furlongs.
Seattle Slew appears on his sire’s side, while English Derby winner Sir Ivor is etched on his dam side, but as with most of the likely runners – the final field will be announced today – nobody truly knows if their horse will stay, which is what makes the whole race so exciting.
Like Cauthen, Patrice Wolfson, who co-owned Affirmed with her late husband, Louis, has identified that California Chrome has similar talents to previous Triple Crown winners but cannot quite zero in on the ethereal qualities that characterise the best of the best.
“I thought Smarty Jones [2004] and Big Brown [2008] had the best chances since Affirmed,” Wolfson said from her Old Westbury base in New York.
“I think California Chrome has the best chance; there’s just something about him. He’s unique. I think to win the Triple Crown, we want to see a horse that has that excitement, and he has that. Let’s hope he shows it on Saturday – I’ll be there.”
It is an unquantifiable aspect to anybody’s personality but talk to breeders and sires, such as Dubawi, often pass down to their progeny mental toughness, which California Chrome has in spades.
For Art Sherman, the colt’s 77-year-old trainer, what California Chrome has that stands out is the sheer desire to win.
“He’s a game horse and he put that horse Social Inclusion away – he tried to challenge Chrome from the three-eighth pole, you know what I mean?” Sherman said from his Southern California Los Alamitos base before arriving at Belmont on Monday.
“I just think that he’s that kind of horse. You’re going to have to run by him to beat him. You’re not going to do it lollygagging around. You’re not going to do it to him just all out thinking that you’ll outrun him; you’re just not going to be able to do that.”
Of the 11 Triple Crown aspirants to have lined up at Belmont – I’ll Have Another was scratched the night before in 2012 – Real Quiet was arguably the most unlucky of those, going down by an agonising nose as a nation held its breath.
To win the silver medal in a Group 1 race would have most owners and trainers in rapture. The heightened environment of the Triple Crown bubble only underlines that when eternal glory is at stake only gold will do, and, in this instance, let us hope it is one plated with a dash of Chrome.
Let us hope the waiting is finally over.
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