Embracing The Challenge of the Triple Crown
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The feat California Chrome has achieved in the last two races is what makes the Triple Crown so special. (Photos by Eclipse Sportswire)
By Tom Pedulla, America’s Best Racing
BALTIMORE – Memo to Tom Chuckas, president of the Maryland Jockey Club, and other well-intended racing officials who are seriously considering altering the Triple Crown format: Take at least the next three weeks to think about it.
Whether or not California-bred upstart California Chrome goes on to be the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978, the drama his bid will provide is rare in any sport. It is to be treasured. It will provide racing with the grandest of stages. Even those who do not know a mane from a tail can appreciate how far Chrome has come – and how much farther he must go.
What challenge in all of sports is greater than the Triple Crown? Consider what Chrome has already done. The 3-year-old, still maturing physically and mentally, took his first plane ride when he journeyed from California to compete on a vastly different surface at Churchill Downs while adjusting to a radically different climate and surroundings in Kentucky.
He heard more hooting and hollering than ever before as he made the long walk from the barn to the paddock and the famed twin spires came into view. He did not turn a hair. When they played My Old Kentucky Home, jockey Victor Espinoza may have had the only dry eyes in the house. He had no time for emotion, not as he prepared for a field of 19 being asked to negotiate a mile and a quarter, farther than any of these horses was ever asked to go before.
It was not easy – winning the Derby never is – but then it was on to Baltimore via a second plane ride with precious little time for anyone to smell the roses. For two weeks, 77-year-old trainer Art Sherman and the rest of the racing world wondered how Chrome would handle the two-week turnaround to the 1 3/16-mile Preakness. How would he handle another very different surface from anything he had ever been on? Could he again go the distance? When Chrome coughed, the racing world winced, fearing he had caught a cold.
The two-week interval played an enormous role in the suspense leading to the Preakness. The tense pre-race buildup prompted a record 123,469 fans to enter Pimlico on Saturday to witness a performance they will not soon forget as Chrome took another step toward racing immortality with a 1 ½-length victory against hard-charging Ride on Curlin. When they left, the buzz was even greater than before, for now a Triple Crown appears to be very much within reach.
The long wait between Triple Crown champions should not prompt change. When something is hard, the answer is not to make it easier but to embrace the challenge, to celebrate it. If even one week was added between each race, the test would no longer be the same. Not even close. Asterisks would be needed to distinguish horses that benefitted from greater spacing from Citation and Secretariat and the other immortals.
It is time to cheer for California Chrome for all we are worth as he attempts one of the greatest feats known to man. It is time to end talk of anything that would mess with tradition and history and require a dreaded asterisk.