ELMONT, N.Y. – Heavy rain turned the track to a sea of slop on Thursday, with training limited to the outer half of the strip.
California Chrome jogged a mile, schooled in the starting gate like an old pro, then galloped another 1 1/4 miles and looked good doing it over the wet track.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Robert Evans, the owner of Tonalist, recalled a conversation he had with the colt’s trainer, Christophe Clement, shortly after Tonalist won a maiden race by an eye-catching four lengths Jan. 18 at Gulfstream Park.
“Christophe said, ‘You created a problem for me. I’ve been critical of all these people who push these horses to the [Kentucky] Derby,’ ” Evans recalled Clement telling him. “ ‘I never had a dirt horse to think about that. Now you created a problem.’ ”
It was a nice problem to have.
The odds of getting a second chance to win the Triple Crown are long. You can count on one hand the riders who were granted a do-over. Victor Espinoza, who failed in 2002 with War Emblem and has returned for the attempt on California Chrome, knows this and is determined to make his second chance count.
“This is very different from then,” Espinoza said. “I’m different. The horse is different.”
ELMONT, N.Y. – When the action builds to an absolute crescendo Saturday with California Chrome racing toward a Triple Crown in the 146th Belmont Stakes, it will not be without help from two announcers whose career arcs are intersecting in a notable way.
::2014 BELMONT STAKES: Latest news, video, PPs, and more
Tom Durkin, the outgoing legend, will call the Belmont for ontrack and simulcast audiences, while Larry Collmus, the rising star, will call the race for a worldwide television audience on NBC.
There are reasons aplenty to root for California Chrome to win the 146th Belmont Stakes Saturday and become racing’s first Triple Crown winner in 36 years. He’s a likeable horse with a nifty ability to spurt away from his rivals, a seemingly kind and generous temperament, and a mostly appealing crew of handlers.
Another reason to like him is that he may be the last of his kind, perhaps the final horse given a chance to win the Triple Crown as it is currently constituted.
The melting point of chromium is 3,465 degrees Fahrenheit, 1,857 degrees Centigrade, or 20 minutes spent in an underground New York City garage on a warm weekday evening waiting for someone to find your rental car.
If California Chrome wins the Belmont Stakes on Saturday to become the 12th winner of the Triple Crown, he will have withstood more heat and more pressure than any American Thoroughbred since Affirmed said “no means no” to Alydar 36 years ago.
This year’s Belmont Stakes looks more like a 2012 Belmont than a 2013 Belmont.
The first set of splits is 2012, the second 2013:
23.72, 49.23, 1:14.72, 1:38.85, 2:04.39
23.11, 46.66, 1:10.95, 1:36.47, 2:03.12
Try to believe that it was the 2012 race, despite a one-mile split that was 2.42 seconds slower, that produced the faster final time, 2:30.42, compared with 2:30.70.
The word “furlong” is Old English and agricultural. The short version: It’s an eighth of a mile, or 220 yards. There will be more than 100,000 people on hand Saturday to watch California Chrome try to win the Triple Crown, and millions more viewing on television. The word will have no meaning to most of them. But in racing, it’s the basic unit of measure. Workouts and races are measured and timed furlong by furlong.
As the longest test of the Triple Crown, the Belmont Stakes pushes its participants to a distance they have never faced before in competition and probably won’t face again.
While the field is filled with horses who competed in the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and other elite two-turn races, there are no prior 1 1/2-mile races for North American 3-year-olds to prove their mettle at the distance.
