'You've Got to Be Lucky'
Even the Best Horses Sometimes Fail to Seize the Triple Crown

By John Scheinman
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, June 2, 2008

In years such as this, even when he's not running a horse, Bob Baffert is losing the Triple Crown.

If a 3-year-old wins the Kentucky Derby and then the Preakness and spends the weeks before the Belmont Stakes at the threshold of racing immortality -- as Big Brown has this year -- Baffert's telephone starts ringing. Everyone wants to disturb his old ghosts: What happened to Silver Charm? Did Desormeaux move too soon on Real Quiet? Would War Emblem have won it if he hadn't stumbled? Why is winning the Triple Crown so darn hard?

"If Big Brown wins, now during this time of year they won't be calling me anymore," said Baffert, who with his mop of white hair, Southern California affability and racetrack prowess is perhaps the most popular trainer in racing.

Thirty years have passed since Affirmed once again turned back Alydar and became the 11th and most recent winner of the Triple Crown. Since then, 10 horses not including Big Brown have won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness only to fall short in the 1 1/2 -mile Belmont, a race tagged with the corny but exceedingly apt slogan, "The Test of the Champion."

Six other horses since 1978 collected some other two-out-of-three combination of the Triple Crown series, and trainer D. Wayne Lukas even won his own personal version in 1995 when his Thunder Gulch took the Derby and Belmont while losing to stablemate Timber Country in the Preakness.

Big Brown -- with his brittle front hoofs, compelling stride, and ever-confident trainer, Richard Dutrow Jr. -- will go into the starting gate Saturday as an overwhelming favorite to be the one to finally get the job done.

Baffert, of course, knows the agony of this particular brand of defeat more than most, and yet his Triple Crown losses aren't the racing memories that torture him. Those would be his bitter Kentucky Derby defeats, when Cavonier got caught at the wire by Lukas's Grindstone in 1996, and when the awe-inspiring Point Given finished fifth in 2001 only to subsequently smash his rivals in the Preakness and Belmont Stakes.

"When I won the Preakness and Belmont with Point Given, I was very upset," Baffert said. "I knew this was the horse I was going to win the Triple Crown with."

Baffert said Point Given suffered a cut eye, a bout of colic and just had a bad day when beaten by Monarchos in the Derby.

"So when everybody asks me why it is so hard to win the Triple Crown, I say, 'Do you have a great horse?' " Baffert said. "Do you think Cigar could have done it? Ghostzapper? Spectacular Bid was a great horse, and he couldn't do it. Sunday Silence. Smarty Jones. Real Quiet. Silver Charm. It's just racing luck."

In 1998, Baffert won the Derby and Preakness again, this time with a cheap horse named Real Quiet, whom he called "The Fish" because of his slender construction.

In the Belmont, jockey Kent Desormeaux, who also rides Big Brown, made his move on Real Quiet with six-eighths of a mile to go -- a move called premature ever since.

Real Quiet collared the two tiring leaders and opened up a sizable advantage in the stretch. Track announcer Tom Durkin, however, saw what was developing, picking up Victory Gallop's gathering momentum on the outside:

"Twenty years in the waiting! One furlong to go, but here comes his rival, Victory Gallop, as they come to the final sixteenth. Kent Desormeaux imploring Real Quiet to hold on. Victory Gallop, a final surge . . . "

The two crossed the line, an inseparable blur. Had Real Quiet won, Baffert and company would have collected a $5 million bonus then offered by Visa for sweeping the Triple Crown.

"Kent Desormeaux, everybody wants to blame him," Baffert said. "You can't get mad at Kent Desormeaux. Maybe he should have waited, but how can I get mad at a guy who won the Kentucky Derby for me on a horse I bought for $17,000 with my best friend?"

Hall of Fame rider Jerry Bailey, now an analyst for ESPN, said Real Quiet was the culprit in the race, but that Desormeaux should have been better attuned to the horse's tendencies.

"Real Quiet eased himself up; he quit running hard," Bailey said. "A lot of horses will do that if they don't have a target to run at. If you know that about a horse, you have to adjust your move accordingly. You don't want to get the lead too soon."

Bailey, like Baffert, has been a central figure in a tale of Triple Crown woe, but cast as a villain.

In 2004, Smarty Jones was the toast of horse racing after sweeping the Derby and Preakness. In the Belmont, however, Bailey, aboard Eddington, and Alex Solis, on Rock Hard Ten, were in no mood to lovingly escort Smarty Jones to the winner's circle. From the opening bell, they pushed and prodded and pressed, and Smarty Jones, under jockey Stewart Elliott, ran faster and faster to get away. He vanquished those rivals through 1 1/4 miles in a blazing 2 minutes 1 second, but there was still a quarter-mile to go.

Despite a clear lead, along came a plodder named Birdstone to gobble up exhausted Smarty Jones, who had never been beaten before, in the final strides.

"Jerry called me afterward, and we talked," said John Servis, who trained Smarty Jones. "He told me his horse is lazy, and that's why he did it. I said: 'You're a very good rider, and I've watched you ride a thousand times, and I've never seen you go to the stick that early in the race.' He said, 'I'm sorry you feel that way.' "

Bailey, too, knew he was going to get his share of phone calls this year and, as usual, prepared methodically.

"I watched the rerun about eight times yesterday," he said. "The matter of fact is, [Smarty Jones] went [a half-mile] in 48 3/5 seconds. I watched a dozen other Belmonts, and pressure was put on the lead horse at 48 and 3. It wasn't much different than other Belmonts."

Hall of Fame trainer Jack Van Berg has similar war stories to tell from 1987, when his Alysheba won the first two legs of the Triple Crown, only to finish fourth in the Belmont behind rival Bet Twice.

At 71, Van Berg has been taking the Triple Crown phone calls a lot longer than Baffert, and his perspective on the quest is simple and sage: "You've got to be lucky; it don't matter how damn smart you are," he said. "It looks like Big Brown has them over the barrel, and he's got the talent, but it's going to take a lot of praying. And you know what the difference between praying in church and praying at the racetrack is? At the racetrack you mean it."