America at large/George Kimball: Even if you're no fan of the horses and couldn't give two whits about American racing, you might want to say a prayer for Relaxed Gesture. The Dermot Weld-trained three-year-old might be the last line of defence between you and an increase in your Visa bill.
No horse has won the American Triple Crown in 26 years. In the decade since it assumed sponsorship of the series, Visa has offered a $5 million bonus to the owners of an animal which could sweep the three Classics. Five times in the last seven years, the same horse won both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes, only to stumble when it got to Belmont's daunting mile-and-a-half oval, but logic screams that "America's Horse," unbeaten Smarty Jones, is poised to reward the faithful two weeks from Saturday.
It isn't altogether certain that Relaxed Gesture, the Moyglare Stud Farm colt who finished second to Yeats in his first outing of 2004 two weeks ago, will cross the ocean to challenge Smarty, but he is nominated to the Belmont Stakes (he would have to be supplemented to enter the Epsom Derby, which falls on the same day), and was on a short list of candidates distributed by New York Racing Association executive vice-president Bill Nader to turf scribes assembled in Baltimore last weekend.
At this point Nader faces a somewhat daunting task in attempting to round up a posse to face Smarty in New York on June 5th, but of the potential challengers the Pat Smullen-ridden Irish colt has one thing going for him: he would be just one of two horses in the likely field Smarty Jones hasn't beaten already.
Weld's colt finished a length and a half in arrears of Yeats in the May 4th Derrinstown Stud Derby Trial at Leopardstown, his first outing since his disappointing eighth-place showing in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile at Santa Anita last autumn. The only win of his brief five-race career came in a maiden race at Leopardstown last August.
Smarty Jones, by contrast, is the first Triple Crown candidate to arrive at the Belmont unbeaten since Seattle Slew 27 years ago, and in eight life-time starts he has now won eight races at eight different distances on five separate racetracks. In that eight-for-eight run he has defeated 68 horses, including most of those likely to face him in New York two weeks from Saturday.
When Secretariat, the greatest racehorse of our lifetime, and, perhaps, anyone's, swept the 1973 Triple Crown he accomplished a feat that hadn't been assayed since Citation in 1948. Remarkably, there followed two more Triple Crown winners in the next six years - Seattle Slew in '77 and Affirmed a year later. Since then, nine others, the last being Funny Cide, have nailed down the Derby-Preakness double only to lose the Belmont.
Over that span, racing experts have said that were we ever to see another Triple Crown champion he would either have to be an exceptional horse or one facing a decidedly mediocre crop of three-year-olds. So far, it appears that both factors may obtain.
The violent thunderstorms forecast to threaten the 129th running of the Preakness last weekend finally arrived Saturday night, three hours after Smarty Jones had crushed 10 other horses. Lightning crackled through the skies and the winds kicked up dust that swirled around Pimlico before the heavens opened up and rain began to pour.
In the midst of this meterological onslaught, horse-trailers and vans were loading up and heading out of town as if to escape the Mongol hordes. The half of the beaten Preakness field that didn't take flight under cover of darkness did so at first light the next morning.
By 9am on Sunday morning literally the only residents of the Pimlico Stakes Barn were Smarty Jones and his faithful companion, a pony named Butterscotch, who nuzzled the Derby and Preakness champion from an adjoining stall as they awaited the van that would take them back to Philadelphia Park.
History will have to wait nearly two more weeks to officially confirm Smarty's greatness, but the evidence would put Smarty Jones a cut above those other Triple Crown disappointments, most recently last year's wonder horse, Funny Cide. True, Funny Cide's Preakness margin of victory - 9 ½ lengths - was nearly as impressive as Smarty's Preakness-record 11 ½ on Saturday, but Funny Cide had lost before and he would lose again.
Five beaten Derby horses who sat out the Preakness - Tapit, Birdstone, Friends Lake, Master David, and Read the Footnotes - may muster up the courage for another crack at Smarty, and a sixth could be added if The Cliff's Edge, who was scratched from the Preakness with a foot injury incurred in a Derby trip in which he threw both front shoes, adequately recuperates.
Beyond that, the other possible challengers include Relaxed Gesture and Royal Assault, who like Birdstone and The Cliff's Edge trained by Nick Zito, following an impressive win over admittedly inferior company in Saturday's $100,000 Sir Barton Stakes at Pimlico.
Gary Stevens, who flew into Baltimore from France to ride runner-up Rock Hard Ten and flew back again on Saturday night (he had three mounts at Longchamps Sunday afternoon) wasn't alone in drawing comparisons between Smarty and Secretariat after last Saturday's massacre at Pimlico.
Before he hopped on the plane back to Paris last weekend, Stevens all but conceded the Belmont to Smarty Jones, noting that since the other horses can't beat him, "the only way he can lose is if he beats himself", and we can think of five million reasons why he probably won't.
