TIPPING POINT:The Triple Crown once defined American racing but the shadow of drug use makes it harder to view as the sporting achievement it once was, writes BRIAN O'CONNOR
THE TRIPLE Crown is one of the great totems of American sport, an easy-to-understand definition of excellence for a sport layered with nuance and depth. Secretariat remains the benchmark by which modern day American champions are measured, the horse that completed the Kentucky Derby-Preakness-Belmont Stakes hat-trick in 1973, the “Big Red” put on the cover of Time who labelled him the “Wow-Horse”. Would they have done that without the Triple Crown handle? It’s doubtful.
Secretariat was the first in 25 years to pull it off. Before him the legendary Citation managed it. Before him there were seven others, starting with Sir Barton in 1919. But back then clean-sweeping America’s three classic races didn’t carry the same kudos. Man O’War didn’t even bother trying to win them all. The gap to Secretariat though was not a result of disinterest, rather an emphasis of the difficulty of the task.
England’s Triple Crown, dragged out as it is over four months, and ranging from the mile of the Guineas through to the St Leger’s stamina test is being considered for Aidan O’Brien’s Epsom Derby winner Camelot in what is a sporting, but unlikely, sop to sentiment by John Magnier’s Coolmore empire.
The English version remains mostly irrelevant in commercial terms these days. America’s most definitely isn’t.
It’s a different sort of challenge, one that demands a combination of class and grit that only the rarest of thoroughbreds possess.
At the start of May is the Kentucky Derby in Louisville, the 10-furlong test where every three-year-old of note is primed for its life in the Run for the Roses. Just a fortnight later comes the Preakness Stakes over the Pimlico track in Baltimore.
That’s over nine furlongs, even more of a speed test than Kentucky. And in the space of just five weeks, the third leg comes in New York where the Belmont is run over what is, in the US, a stamina-sapping mile and a half.
For a while in the 1970s, it didn’t seem too difficult at all. Just four years after Secretariat, the dark monster that was Seattle Slew muscled his way unbeaten to the Triple Crown. And in 1978, Affirmed did the same, edging out Alydar three times in what was one of racing’s greatest rivalries.
But any sense of nonchalance about the Triple Crown challenge was doused in 1979. Spectacular Bid was rated by many backstretch hardboots better than ‘Slew’ and Affirmed. His trainer Buddy Delp christened the grey “the greatest horse ever to look through a bridle”. The Bid swept through the Derby and the Preakness but a combination of an injury scare and jockey-error meant defeat in the Belmont. It was a salutary reminder that a Crown doesn’t come easy.
Since then 10 others have gone to Belmont with the Crown in their sights, names full of resonance among them too, like Alysheba, Sunday Silence and Silver Charm. Watch Real Quiet’s 1998 Belmont effort on YouTube and try betting against him in the photo. But he didn’t get it. And still we wait for a successor to Affirmed.
It is 34 years now and the days of thoroughbreds getting on the front of Time are long gone.
Instead general media coverage of racing in the US now centres on more lurid matters, primarily a drugs issue that continues to dog the Sport of Kings and racetrack casinos.
Unlike every other major racing jurisdiction in the world, the US continues to allow some drugs to be used on raceday. The most common is the medication known as Lasix which prevents blood-vessels bursting. It is by definition performance-enhancing.
Combined with America’s racing primarily being staged on dirt and not turf, it has contributed to an increasing isolationism of the sport in comparison with the rest of the world. But it is the medication issue that is primary.
When it comes to American horses, no one can be sure how much of their performance, and pedigree, is enhanced by dope. How can the genetic make-up of a horse be trusted when its bloodlines are compromised by the widespread use of drugs to mask physical deficiencies? Not for nothing is the Breeders’ Cup known to European sceptics as the Bleeders’ Cup.
America though continues to argue everyone else is out of step, despite overwhelming evidence that its see-no-evil approach to drugs is ultimately counter-productive – and especially now.
This Saturday night, I’ll Have Another gets a shot at becoming the 12th US Triple Crown winner. The story of a colt bought for just $11,000 and ridden by a jockey who just a year ago was riding gaff tracks in Canada has all the ingredients for an epic feel-good story that might ultimately even make the big screen a la Secretariat.
An entire industry should be willing him to win the Belmont. But that’s where the insidiousness of doping is so damaging. Only cheerleaders can will him on with 100 per cent conviction. Can we believe what we see? In American terms I’ll Have Another has a spotless drugs record. His trainer Doug O’Neill does not.
O’Neill has a history of horses in his barn testing positive for TCO-2. This is the test for an illegal process known as “milk-shaking”. Fundamentally a potion largely consisting of bicarbonate of soda is given to a horse to elevate its levels of carbon dioxide, thus fending off lactic acid. That can allow a horse run fast for longer. The process is also believed to be an effective masking agent.
At a recent hearing O’Neill was suspended for a minimum of 45 days and fined $15,000 after one of his horses tested over the limits for total carbon dioxide.
The man at the centre of I’ll Have Another’s Triple Crown challenge vigorously denies ever “milk-shaking” and has suggested he is being victimised.
And in a way he is, in that many experienced horse-players in the US believe he is guilty primarily of little else bar getting caught, whereas others continue to get away with a process believed to be widespread in a rampant medication culture.
There is no doubt O’Neill’s record has cast a pall over I’ll Have Another’s classic streak.
Penny Chenery, the venerable 90-year-old owner of Secretariat, said last week that I’ll Have Another’s owner “should be embarrassed” at allegations of O’Neill giving performance-enhancing substances to horses.
It’s nearly 45 years since the horse Chenery bred won the Belmont but Secretariat’s name is still evocative. O’Neill admits to being stung by the criticism.
If nothing else this latest Triple Crown bid highlights the parlous road any sport takes when supposedly getting “realistic” about drugs.
The rigours of training on dirt racetracks can be tougher on thoroughbreds than galloping on turf or an all-weather surface. Trainers argue to a disjointed governance that they can’t do the job without drugs. And to the shame of those in charge they continually pander to this shinola.
The result is that a piece of racing history is in the offing this weekend, a chance for I’ll Have Another to follow in the hoof-prints of Citation, Slew and Secretariat himself. And roaring him home at full volume isn’t on because it’s hard to fully believe it. And that’s just plain sad.
