California Chrome will race again at 5

DEL MAR, Calif. – The past few months have been difficult ones for trainer Art Sherman as California Chrome was stabled eight time zones away, pointing for races Sherman thought inappropriate, but he got the call he hoped for over the weekend when Duncan Taylor of Taylor Made Farm in Kentucky informed Sherman that California Chrome would be sent back to Sherman with the intent of racing him next year at age 5.

“That picked my head up,” Sherman said Sunday.

California Chrome currently is at Taylor Made, which acquired the interest in California Chrome that had belonged to minority owner and breeder Steve Coburn. California Chrome was diagnosed with bone bruising, which curtailed the plans of majority owner and breeder Perry Martin to run in the Arlington Million next month in Chicago following a fruitless spell in England. Taylor Made bought into California Chrome and will stand him at stud, but according to Sherman, “They want to have another big year before going to stud.”

“He’ll come back to me after another 85 days or so,” Sherman said. “Duncan Taylor has taken over all the decisions with the horse.”

Sherman said he thought the time off right now would do California Chrome good, irrespective of rest necessitated by the bone bruising.

“He never had a little break,” Sherman said. “This will help him heal up.”

Sherman said California Chrome “lost about 100 to 160 pounds” during his odyssey, which sent him to Dubai and on to England before returning to the U.S. earlier this month. He spent more than three months in England in the yard of trainer Rae Guest.

“He was real underweight, with all the traveling to different places,” Sherman said. “He needed to be home. He’s going to make a nice handicap horse. I’m sure of it.”

In 2014, California Chrome won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes en route to year-end honors as Horse of the Year and champion 3-year-old male. He has raced twice this year, finishing second in the San Antonio Stakes and the Dubai World Cup, both on dirt.

After that, Martin overruled Sherman and Coburn and decided to send California Chrome to England potentially to run in a pair of races, including the Prince of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot last month. But he missed both races, including when suffering a foot bruise just days before the Prince of Wales’s.