ELMONT, N.Y. – Dale Romans knew early on that American Pharoah was special.
He was at a farm in Ocala, Fla., with several other of trainers who worked for Ahmed Zayat when American Pharoah breezed for the first time.
“Super horse,” Romans said. “To watch his first quarter-mile breeze and see it all come together . . . it’s more fun than if I had him to train because there would have been more stress.”
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet’s feckless pals, spent the first part of their play written by Tom Stoppard wondering why a tossed coin kept coming up heads. After seventy-some tosses, all heads, they paused to consider the meaning.
“A weaker man might be moved to reexamine his faith, for nothing else at least in the law of probability,” said one.
A toss. Heads.
“Getting a bit of a bore, isn’t it,” said the other.
“A bore? What about the suspense?”
A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit alleging that American Pharoah’s owner, Ahmed Zayat, reneged on a $1.65 million debt, citing the statute of limitations and the plaintiff’s difficulty in proving his allegations, according to court records.
William Martini, a judge for the U.S. District Court of New Jersey, granted a motion requested by Zayat to have the case dismissed on Thursday, according to court documents. The motion states that the action should be considered closed.
ELMONT, N.Y. – A generation has passed since the last Triple Crown winner. Steve Cauthen was 18 when he rode Affirmed to a series sweep in 1978. Now he’s 55, and he’s still the last jockey to win the Triple Crown.
“I remember people saying the Triple Crown was too easy, to make it tougher,” Cauthen recently recalled. “That’s laughable now.”
Indeed, the stretch at Belmont Park contains the failed dreams of many a Triple Crown bid since 1978, most recently last year, when California Chrome could not add the Belmont to victories in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness.
ELMONT, N.Y. – For the better part of the last two decades, Bob Baffert and Todd Pletcher have been the dominant trainers in horse racing. Baffert, the best in the West, and Pletcher, the beast of the East, have participated in – and won – virtually all of the biggest races the sport has to offer.
Over the previous 36 Triple Crown seasons, 13 horses have won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness but have been unable to close the deal in the Belmont. One of those, I’ll Have Another in 2012, never made it to the starting gate; the others were derailed by fate, circumstance, or just a better horse on that day. Each day leading up to this year's Belmont, we will take a look at one of the 13 failed attempts at capturing Thoroughbred racing’s most-elusive prize. Today: California Chrome.
2014 California Chrome
This will be AMERICAN PHAROAH’s fourth race in only eight weeks, and that’s a real concern. So, too, is knowing that every Triple Crown winner started at least twice previously at Belmont Park, while Saturday will mark his first race over this unique track.
Can American Pharoah win the Belmont Stakes and become the first winner of the American Triple Crown since Affirmed in 1978?
Of course he can, but he’s a very bad bet to do so at 3-5.
Broadly speaking, the parimutuel market on horse racing is efficient and rational. Favorites win more than second choices, who win more than third choices, and so on. Prices, shaped by tens or hundreds of thousands of individual speculators, generally end up being a pretty accurate reflection of horses’ actual chances.
ELMONT, N.Y. – It isn’t often that a trainer could run the defending Breeders’ Cup Classic winner in a Grade 1 race and have it be only the second-most important race of his day.
Such is the case for trainer Bob Baffert, who two hours before he saddles American Pharoah in the $1.5 million Belmont Stakes – and a bid to win the Triple Crown – will send out Bayern in the $1.25 million Metropolitan Handicap at Belmont Park.
