Sometimes, you just know. My only concern about California Chrome was the same one Art Sherman had – the first 200 yards. Once the colt made that a non-issue, I started looking around for my superfecta horses.

Two hours after California Chrome had dominated the Kentucky Derby, I asked Sherman when he thought the horse had the race won. He said, “The eighth pole.”

And he was not talking about the second time past the eighth pole, when California Chrome was up by five lengths. He was talking about the first time, when the colt had gotten forward position.

California Chrome was greeted last week in Kentucky with a misspelled saddle towel (“Califorina”) and a Churchill Downs media bio that referred to him as a “bay colt by Lucky Pulpit.”

He will arrive in Maryland next week as the toast of the racing world, a white-stockinged California superstar every bit as chestnut as the day he was born.

There are significant races in the Mid-Atlantic in the spring, summer, and fall, races with great tradition and big purses. The Preakness at Pimlico, however, stands alone.

It is the first time we all get to see the Kentucky Derby winner run, and a shot at the Triple Crown is at stake.

This year, we are fortunate to have a truly exceptional horse who keeps running the same way race after race. The Derby was the fifth straight race California Chrome has put away at the head of the stretch. None of the speed horses can keep up with him. None of the closers can catch him.

Dear Editor,

Another disappointing Kentucky Derby for me – not the race or its results but NBC's coverage of it. I was hoping to see Thoroughbred racehorses but barely got a glimpse. Instead, I got women's hats, celebrities, celebrities' picks, a lesson in how to make a mint julep, the inanities of Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir, and a man I think is an enemy of horse racing, Bob Costas.

In almost every respect but one, California Chrome’s victory in the Kentucky Derby was satisfying and heartwarming, a triumph for the little guy that fans and the media always relish.

Since 20-horse fields have become the norm in the Kentucky Derby, America’s most famous race also is its most inscrutable race. It has produced many surprising winners and some who defy comprehension, such as 50-1 shots Mine That Bird in 2009 and Giacomo in 2005. It is so contentious that no horse in the last four years has gone to the post at odds of less than 4-1.

In his preview of the 1958 Kentucky Derby for Sports Illustrated, Whitney Tower took a step back from the hoopla surrounding the exciting California favorite to shed a little calm on the proceedings.

The book on Gary Stevens is that he tends to like every horse he’s ever ridden, describing some of them as champions in the making while others brush perilously close to being nothing less than the second coming of Man o’ War.

This could be an occupational hazard. Riding horses like Gentlemen, Point Given, Serena’s Song, Beholder, Safely Kept, War Chant, Fantastic Light, Candy Ride, Singspiel, and Kentucky Derby winners Thunder Gulch, Silver Charm, and Winning Colors can give a rider a warped sense of perspective.

Art Sherman was seeing to a few last-minute items around the barn late Sunday morning before sending California Chrome to Kentucky. He was outwardly calm, if by calm one means checking his phone every 30 seconds to see who’s calling now, or glancing furtively at the computer screen images from the closed-circuit cameras in California Chrome’s stall. He made sure the colt’s bag of horse treats were by the door, ready to ship, then picked up a bundle of clothes.

“Alan’s – can you believe that?” Sherman said. “At his age, sending laundry home for his mom. And she’ll do it, too!”

In a sport amply populated by rogues and cheaters, trainer Steve Asmussen has become Public Enemy No. 1. He has shamed Thoroughbred racing so badly that the chairman of The Jockey Club, Ogden Mills “Dinny” Phipps, declared that there is “a dark cloud hovering over our sport” and that Asmussen ought to stay away from the Kentucky Derby and the Kentucky Oaks.