Del Mar president Joe Harper gazed westward at the expanse of his freshly laid turf course. In the distance, the familiar landmarks of Dog Beach, the Brigantine, and the AmTrak trestle were comforting sights, but beneath his feet was spread the new Bermuda grass, transferred only the week before from its growing fields in the desert. Harper looked down.
“Grow,” he said.
When the Blue Grass Stakes is run at Keeneland on Saturday, it is unlikely to produce the next Kentucky Derby winner. Though it was once the most important 3-year-old prep race, it became irrelevant after Keeneland replaced its dirt track with a synthetic surface. None of the seven horses who captured the Blue Grass on Polytrack proceeded to win on Churchill Downs’s dirt; most ran dismally.
Greg Gilchrist won’t be taking any credit for any part of the California Chrome fairy tale. The colt, now perched at the threshold of Kentucky Derby favoritism, has cleanly divorced himself from all traditional moorings to be what anthropologists might call sui generis, which is racetrack Latin for “what a freak.”
And yet if Gilchrist, acting on behalf of Scott Sherwood’s Blinkers On Racing Stable partnership, had not gone to $30,000 to buy a filly by Not for Love at the second session of the Midlantic sale of 2-year-olds in training in May of 2008 . . .
California Chrome just made my Kentucky Derby superfecta play much less complicated.
After the San Felipe Stakes, when I went back and reviewed California Chrome’s entire record, looked at his recent races, and wrote about it, I decided, two months out, that California Chrome was my Derby horse. It was not just the 108 Beyer Speed Figure in the San Felipe, although that certainly got my attention. It was the way the horse was winning – speed on command, powerful strides, and wide margins.
Now that Keeneland has put a stake in the heart of the great American experiment with engineered racing surfaces with its announcement this week that it would be replacing its Polytrack with dirt, it seemed like a good time to tune in with Bill Casner, an outspoken proponent of the synthetic technology over the past decade.
Wood Memorial Day at Aqueduct is the unofficial start of spring and quality racing in New York, with the Wood and the Carter Handicap the first Grade 1 races in the Empire State since the Cigar Mile last Thanksgiving weekend. This year’s unusual 12-race all-dirt card, however, is also a bit of a Groundhog Day – a reminder that there’s still some chill in the air and that save for a four-race stretch of stakes racing, winter racing is not quite over in these parts.
With major stakes winners Candy Boy, Hoppertunity, and California Chrome in the mix, there is a good chance that the results of the $1 million Santa Anita Derby will resonate well past the end of its nine furlongs late Saturday afternoon.
You like to see a race have legs, especially a historically rich race like the Derby, despite its role as a feeder event for that other Derby at Churchill Downs. Of course, there’s no getting around it. But nothing says the top finishers of the Santa Anita Derby can’t have lives of their own after the first Saturday in May.
Owners, trainers, breeders, and fans all dream of seeing a young racehorse start his career so brilliantly that his potential appears limitless. There haven’t been many such Thoroughbred stars in the United States in recent years, but an extraordinarily precocious colt has suddenly burst onto the racing scene.
Social Inclusion made his debut at Gulfstream Park on Feb. 22 and won a maiden race by 7 1/2 lengths in fast time. In his second start, he faced Honor Code, then considered a top contender for the Kentucky Derby, and ran away from him by 10 lengths, breaking a track record.
If California Chrome performs the way Art Sherman thinks he can Saturday in the $1 million Santa Anita Derby, look out.
Here comes Art Sherman.
If he wins Saturday, California Chrome would be heading to the May 3 Kentucky Derby as one of the favorites. This would not be unusual. Any Santa Anita Derby winner, barring the rankest of longshots, heads to Louisville as a horse to watch – even if his trainer is a 77-year-old Derby rookie.
