LITTLE ROCK — Burned before, bothered by the trainer’s baggage, or unable to connect with the horse’s background, casual sports fans will not root for Kentucky Derby-Preakness winner I’ll Have Another with the same enthusiasm as they did for Smarty Jones in 2004.
That year, the Arkansas Derby winner captured the imagination for a variety of reasons:
—Being schooled in the starting gate, Smarty Jones almost died when he reared, smashed his head on the top of the gate, was diagnosed with a fractured skull, and spent three weeks in a hospital.
—Early on, he raced at Philadelphia Park, a minor league racetrack.
—A relative unknown in thoroughbred racing, owner Roy Chapman had serious health issues before Smarty Jones won the Kentucky Derby and often used a wheelchair and needed an oxygen tank.
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—Chapman originally hired Bobby Camac to train Smarty Jones, but Camac and his wife were murdered and Chapman turned the horse over to John Servis.
—The connections stuck with journeyman jockey Stewart Elliott even though they had their pick of top riders.
—Winning the Rebel and Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park and the Kentucky Derby, the colt earned a $5 million bonus offered by Oaklawn owner Charles J. Cella in celebration of the racetrack’s 100th anniversary.
All in all, there was something that resonated with most everybody. His quest to complete the Triple Crown in the Belmont brought out 120,139 — the largest crowd ever to see a sporting event in New York — and all fell silent when a 36-1 shot named Birdstone caught Smarty Jones near the finish line. The book that followed was called “Smarty Jones: America’s Horse.”
Four years later, Big Brown had the look of a Triple Crown winner, but jockey Kent Desormeaux realized something was wrong with the horse in the Belmont and did not push the colt.
Twice disappointed, some folks will refuse to let go and climb on the I’ll Have Another bandwagon.
Others will be hesitant because trainer Doug O’Neill has been accused in California of the illegal practice of giving a horse a blend of bicarbonate of soda, sugar and electrolytes. Called “milkshaking,” the mixture is supposed to reduce fatigue and enhance performance.
“I swear on my kids’ eyes I never milkshaked a horse,” O’Neill said more than a week prior to the Preakness.
“We play by the rules,” he said after the Preakness. He has filed a federal lawsuit suggesting the state’s drug testing program could be flawed.
The horse is owned by J. Paul Reddam, a former professor of philosophy who established a mortgage lending company in the mid-90s and sold it to GMAC Mortgage — an admirable and impressive resume, but nothing to touch the heartstrings of the general public.
Come June 9, the only thing that really matters is whether I’ll Have Another can negotiate 1 1-2 miles faster than a few opponents from the Derby and a half-dozen or more who did not compete in either of the first two Triple Crown races. Often late-developing, such horses are fresh and dangerous.
Bodemeister, run down in the deep stretch of both the Derby and the Preakness, will pass on the Belmont, a move that could create a different pace scenario.
In both Kentucky and Maryland, I’ll Have Another simply tracked down front-running Bodemeister. If nobody wants the lead at the marathon distance, I’ll Have Another has sufficient speed to go straight to the front, a situation that would put the onus on 25-year-old Mario Gutierrez to correctly calculate the fractions. If the leader goes too slow, it’s a cavalry charge to the finish; if he goes too fast, he risks running out of horse.
Gutierrez handled the Derby and the Preakness flawlessly, but three weeks is time to over-think a horse race.
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Harry King is sports columnist for Stephens Media’s Arkansas News Bureau. His e-mail address is hking@arkansasnews.com.