Monday, October 13, 2008

A Classic in a Minor Key

Los Angeles, October 14, 2008--The day started with my friendly 7-Eleven telling me that the price of the Daily Racing Form was going up 50 cents the week after the Breeders' Cup. Then news of Big Brown's injury and retirement came across. Suddenly Curlin's pending between-races workout at Santa Anita wasn't as important as it once was.

The 25th Breeders' Cup wasn't a cornucopia of gate attractions to begin with, and with the forced departure of Big Brown, the only names worth hanging on the marquee are Curlin and Zenyatta. Curlin, working for the second time in eight days at Santa Anita, just hours after Big Brown was felled across the country at Aqueduct, is still technically on the fence for the Classic. That Jess Jackson, Curlin's owner, is such a tease. Zenyatta, in any other game, would be of rock-star proportions by now. But outside racing's vacuum, Main Street America isn't sure whether she's a horse or a new substitute for Lipitor. The Breeders' Cup's deep thinkers have compounded the filly's obscurity by scheduling her race, whatever it is called, in the limbo of a weekday afternoon.


Curlin vs. Zenyatta in the Classic is the only matchup that can save this Breeders' Cup now, and in the immediate aftermath of Big Brown's injury there were no bulletins from the Zenyatta camp that they were changing their minds about leaving their own division. A solid whipping of Curlin in the Classic--looking at what's left of the field, this seems an hallucination--and a win by Zenyatta in her race, whatever it is called, might allow Zenyatta to slip in the side door as Horse of the Year, although Big Brown might poll some sympathy votes. If Curlin and Zenyatta both lost at Santa Anita, Big Brown's stock would really soar.

Sympathy votes for a horse trained by Rick Dutrow? What's the old line--if it looks like a paradox, sounds like a paradox, walks like a paradox and smells like a paradox, it must be a paradox. Dutrow is the consummate horseman, but when he opens his mouth, which is all the time, much of what comes out is bilge and he frequently sounds like a lummox. There are some of my ilk who find him refreshing and even entertaining. C'est la vie. Currently he's in a beef with the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission, which wants to suspend him for 15 days because one of his horses, Salute the Count, tested positive for clenbuterol, a prohibited drug, after a race at Churchill Downs the day before Big Brown won the Kentucky Derby.

Clenbuterol is a strong bronchodilator used to treat horses with breathing problems. Dutrow's long rap sheet, much of it filled with minor violations, includes two previous clenbuterol rulings, and Salute the Count, whose blood was analyzed twice by university laboratories, had 60 per cent more than the Kentucky threshold. But the best trainers invariably hire the best lawyers, and Dutrow's counsel found that the Iowa State and Louisiana State labs tested "plasma" when Kentucky rules state that "serum" must be used. The head of the LSU lab told the Louisville Courier-Journal that this was a "clerical error," that the lab uses "plasma" as a generic term for blood, but a Kentucky state hearing officer has recommended that the commission rescind the suspension.

The hearing officer's report uses the words "promptly" and "timely," but there's nothing prompt or timely about this case. The race at issue was run on May 2, and the samples, blood and urine, were sent to the first lab three days later. The rest of the way, expediency has taken the hindmost. There have been scheduled hearings, and postponed hearings, and finally, at the hearing that counted, Dutrow was a no-show. That's his style. He begged off testifying in Washington when Congress took an extended look at the disarray that is horse racing earlier this year.

The Kentucky commission, not bound by the hearing officer's recommendation, meets at the end of the month, a few days after the Breeders' Cup and just about the time the cost of my Racing Form goes up, to re-consider L'affaire Dutrow. Even without Big Brown, Dutrow will be at Santa Anita with several horses, including Kip Deville, last year's winner of the Breeders' Cup Mile. Those waiting for Dutrow to say the wrong thing were not disappointed. "As long as (a suspension) doesn't happen until after the Breeders' Cup, I don't care," he told the New York Post. "I was planning on taking a vacation, anyway."

This is the way it is with most trainer suspensions. The violators get a vacation, with pay, phone in important instructions to an assistant, and it's business as usual at the barn.

Barry Irwin, president of the Team Valor International racing outfit, responded to an item about Dutrow in the Paulick Report: "Having worked in law enforcement as a probation counselor, and as a clerk for Los Angeles civil service departments while attending college, I am not surprised at this screwup. I wonder how the feds ever managed to nail Al Capone and make it stick."

Meantime, the Oak Tree Racing Association, a Santa Anita tenant and host for the Breeders' Cup, soldiers on. Sherwood Chillingworth of Oak Tree is wondering why lightning had to strike twice. In 2003, the last time there was a Breeders' Cup at Santa Anita, Mineshaft, best older horse in the country, also didn't make it to the Classic. Curlin vs. Zenyatta? Chillingworth would sell his soul.

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