Tuesday, November 11, 2008
A Blueprint for the Sheik
Los Angeles, November 11, 2008--If Sheik Mohammed really wants to win a Kentucky Derby, he should treat himself to a history lesson. Clive Brittain, an English trainer, brought a horse from overseas more than 20 years ago, and finished second, 2 1/4 lengths behind Ferdinand, at Churchill Downs. Brittain, who did everything right in preparing Bold Arrangement, has never been back to the Derby, but he's left behind a blueprint that any foreign horseman, including the sheik, ought to follow.
I'm relaying, free of charge, this professional advice to the sheik because anybody who's spent as much money as he has over the years should eventually win the Derby. It is not hard to predict that Sheik Mohammed will win the Derby one day, but because he is his own man, has fierce national pride and is walking proof that royalty is not exempt from bullheadedness, he's determined to pick up the roses with a horse who's prepped for the race in Dubai. If the sheik won the Derby using Clive Brittain's blueprint, he'd probably throw the trophy back.
Ironically, Pebbles raced for Sheik Mohammed. The next year, had he been paying attention, the sheik would have noticed Brittain, while working for another client, marching into Kentucky with Bold Arrangement. The chestnut colt ran often as a 2-year-old in England and France, winning four of nine starts. All of the races were on grass, none of the wins was farther than seven furlongs, but at a mile Bold Arrangement proved that he was a stiff competitor. On the side, Brittain trained him on a sandy track with the Kentucky Derby in mind.
Brittain figured that at three, Bold Arrangement needed only one race. It wouldn't be on grass at Goodwood, Newcastle or Sandown (nor in Dubai--the UAE Derby wasn't even a pipedream then), but at this far-off kingdom called Keeneland. Far off from Brittain's yard in Blighty, but only 70 miles up the road from Churchill Downs and the Derby. The Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland was a mile and an eighth, the perfect prep for another eighth of a mile, and at the time was run only eight days before the Derby. Unlike now, the Blue Grass was still a fashionable way to get to the Derby; Gato Del Sol and Spectacular Bid, of recent memory, had the Blue Grass-Derby double on their ledgers.
Several jockeys, including Lester Piggot and Pat Eddery, had ridden Bold Arrangement at two. For the Blue Grass, Brittain went with Eddery, who rode the colt to a fast-closing third, beaten by less than a length. That result aside, Brittain wanted to switch to Laffit Pincay, who had ridden in the Derby 12 times and had finished first (Swale) and second (Stephan's Odyssey) the two years before. But Pincay had already signed up to ride Groovy, for a $25,000 mount fee. Here's where Brittain got lucky. He retreated to Eddery, which would have been a mistake, because Eddery, a star in Britain and the jockey who had ridden Pebbles at Aqueduct, had never ridden in a Derby. Brittain was saved from the miscue when Eddery drew an overseas suspension just before the Derby, and the assignment went to Chris McCarron, a Derby veteran and a quick-study expert at getting to know a new horse. McCarron rode the race perfectly, and but for Ferdinand and Bill Shoemaker negotiating an eye-of-the-needle hole in the stretch, would have been aboard the winner. (For the record, Groovy led for six furlongs and finished last).
Quarantine restrictions prevented Bold Arrangement from running in the Preakness. I would have liked to have seen Brittain get another chance. Instead, he went back to England, to be remembered as the trainer who reached the warning track instead of knocking one out of the park.
With several Derby horses, Sheik Mohammed has yet to hit one out of the infield. His Derby starters have been an assortment of hard-luck, ill-prepared horses, starting in 1992 with Arazi, who came to Louisville with two surgical knees, an unenthusiastic trainer and a woeful loss of flesh since his 2-year-old season. After prepping his Derby horses in the UAE Derby and, worse, trial races in Dubai, the sheik should look up Clive Brittain and borrow his formula.
The sheik's best shot at the roses was Worldly Manner, the Del Mar Futurity winner who was bought from John and Betty Mabee for an estimated $5 million. Instead of leaving the colt in California, with Bob Baffert, Worldly Manner was sent home to Dubai, where a trial race was his only foundation as a 3-year-old. In the 1999 Derby, his first bona fide start in almost eight months, Worldly Manner had only Cat Thief to beat at the quarter pole, but faded to seventh place. This was a Derby that was anyone's to win, as witness Charismatic's victory at 31-1. "If (Worldly Manner) had had a U.S. prep race, he might have won the Derby," trainer Nick Zito said.
Now Sheik Mohammed has revisited the past, swooping in to take over another Baffert-trained colt and spiriting him off to Dubai. Will the sheik run Midshipman in the UAE Derby, then return him to Baffert a few weeks before the Derby and ask him to pretend he's War Emblem? By then, Vineyard Haven, bought from trainer Bobby Frankel, Joe Torre and others for what was probably more than $10 million, might be the Derby horse of the sheik's choice. The sheik could even reunite Vineyard Haven with the Derby-seasoned Frankel in time for Louisville, but I won't give him any ideas.
Unless Sheik Mohammed exorcises himself from this set-in-stone plan to capture Louisville, the only way he'll win a Derby is to show up with another Worldly Manner in a Charismatic kind of year. He'll need to have a very good horse facing a compromised crop. Years like that happen, but considering the sheik's wherewithal, it seems like an obtuse way to go.
Written by Bill Christine
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