LOUISVILLE, Ky. - It was exactly five years ago Friday that Bob Baffert was alongside Bob and Beverly Lewis at Belmont Park, watching Silver Charm be passed by Touch Gold in the final furlong of the 129th Belmont Stakes.
That June 7, 1997, defeat remains one of the more gut-wrenching near-misses that have dotted Triple Crown futility in the 24 years since Affirmed became the last horse to complete the coveted sweep by winning the Belmont.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. - Arlington's marketing efforts are pumping up this year as the track's 75th anniversary season. It only seems like Chindi has been around for all that time.
Really, Chindi is only a 7-year-old, though his first race, a romp in a $25,000 maiden claimer, did come five years ago - the ancient past by current standards of Thoroughbred longevity - and he has made 55 career starts.
GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas - See How She Runs, who has won all five of her career starts, had her first breeze on Wednesday morning since winning the Grade 1 Selene May 20 at Woodbine, near Toronto, Canada. And she is now being pointed for the $150,000 Iowa Oaks at Prairie Meadows on July 3.
See How She Runs worked four furlongs in 48.60 seconds at her Lone Star Park base under regular rider Don Pettinger, and has done well since the Selene, a race for which she traveled from Texas to Woodbine.
MIAMI - Three years ago Ariel Smith was on top of the racing world. He was the Eclipse Award winner as the nation's premier apprentice rider before he even celebrated his 17th birthday.
But as often happens to young jockeys to whom success comes quickly and easily, Smith learned that success can be fleeting as well.
Smith's fall from the top was not precipitated by the loss of his five-pound apprentice allowance but by a chronic knee injury, the result of a nasty spill at Saratoga during the summer of his award-winning season of 1999.
ALTOONA, Iowa - Nut N Better, Iowa-bred mare of the year in 2001, will face a strong field of six statebred fillies and mares when she attempts to defend her title in Friday's $60,000-added Mamie Eisenhower Stakes at Prairie Meadows.
Nut N Better, a 5-year-old daughter of Miracle Heights, made a successful return to the races from a 7 1/2-month layoff when she rallied through the stretch to get up by a nose against open allowance company here at six furlongs May 17.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The hardest work is finished. War Emblem passed his final workout for the Belmont Stakes with flying colors Tuesday at Churchill Downs, allowing trainer Bob Baffert to let out a proverbial sigh of relief. Now he and the rest of the sporting world turn their attention to Saturday at Belmont Park, where War Emblem will attempt to become the first Triple Crown winner in 24 years.
ELMONT, N.Y. - This is the third time in the last six seasons that trainer Bob Baffert has had a horse heading into the Belmont Stakes with a chance to win the Triple Crown. Like Silver Charm in 1997 and Real Quiet in 1998, War Emblem goes into the Belmont this Saturday with only one lap of the 1 1/2-mile Belmont Park oval standing between him and immortality.
Experience has made the training aspect of the quest easier. "The road gets smoother every time you go down it," Baffert said. But in other ways, this has been his bumpiest ride yet in the Triple Crown.
NEW YORK - When is $5 million almost an afterthought?
When your horse is going for the Triple Crown.
Winning the crown is so rare and so special that owners who go into the Belmont Stakes with a chance to turn the feat say that the last thing on their minds is the $5 million bonus awarded to a Triple Crown winner.
"I'd have to say the bonus was in the back - the very back - of our minds," said Bob Lewis, the owner, along with his wife, Beverly, of two horses who narrowly missed the Triple Crown in the past five years, Silver Charm in 1997 and Charismatic in 1999.
SAN MATEO, Calif. - Fifteen years ago, Reina Gonzalez was breaking young Thoroughbreds for Dr. John Woolsey in her hometown of Santa Rosa, Calif.
Thursday, she will be trying to win the feature race at Bay Meadows for him.
Gonzalez will start Marcutio in the one-mile starter allowance race on the turf for nonwinners-of-two races. Marcutio, a 3-year-old who will meet older horses in the feature, won his turf debut in a maiden special weight race in his last start.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Opposition continues to mount over a proposal to move the Los Angeles County Fair race meet this fall from Fairplex Park to Santa Anita. The Thoroughbred Owners of California is the latest organization to express concern over the move, joining the Oak Tree Racing Association and Del Mar Thoroughbred Club in recommending against a transfer of dates.
In a Monday letter to the California Horse Racing Board, TOC president John Van de Kamp requested the CHRB "take no action on the requested move for 2002."
