It was said that the quick turn-around from the gruelling Arc, plus the oppressive heat at Santa Anita, were the undoing of Dancing Brave. The three horses that finished in front of him, Manila, Theatrical and that fine mare Estrapade, might have had something to do with it as well. It is unlikely that Sea the Stars, should he run at Santa Anita, will trifle with the Turf. Why fool with a $3-million race, when a $5-million opportunity, the Classic, is also at hand? Besides, Sea the Stars' Irish trainer, the estimable John Oxx, has already suggested that the Classic distance, 1 1/4 miles, is better suited to the colt than the Turf, which is a quarter of a mile longer.
Sea the Stars may be any kind on any surface. He lost the first start of his life, then has been flawless in the next seven. Of his five Group 1 wins this year, two have come in the Two Thousand Guineas and the Epsom Derby, which makes him the first horse since Nashwan, in 1989, to win the opening legs of England's Triple Crown. While we Americans obsess over our Triple Crown, which hasn't been swept since 1978, in England the series is hardly more than an afterthought. In more than nine decades, only two horses (Bahram in 1935 and Nijinsky II in 1970) have swept the English Triple, and more often than not there isn't a horse that runs in all three of the races. This year, five minutes after Sea the Stars had won the Derby, Oxx announced that the 1 3/4-mile St. Leger, the last of the Triple Crown, was not in the cards. "The genes have to be there," Oxx said. In the U.S., he would have been drawn and quartered (remember the vile things Pimlico's Chick Lang said about Gato Del Sol's trainer, Eddie Gregson, after he announced that his Derby winner wouldn't run in the Preakness?). In England, you could count the pshaws on one hand.
While Sea the Stars' bloodlines don't necessarily translate into marathon distances, being a son of Cape Cross and Urban Sea doesn't leave a horse on the wrong side of the tracks. Cape Cross, a champion older horse in England, sired Ouija Board, twice the winner of the Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf. Urban Sea was the 1993 Arc winner and before her death in March, while dropping a colt, she produced a string of champions.
Urban Sea was one of the first horses that David Tsui owned. Tsui bred Sea the Stars, although the horse runs in the name of his 27-year-old son, Christopher Tsui. There are a number of stories, all lip-smacking, about how the elder Tsui came by Urban Sea. One version is that Ling Tsui, David Tsui's wife, was approached by a French bloodstock agent who knew a Japanese horseman who had a bad case of the shorts. The Japanese man had 20 horses to sell, all young and reasonably priced, and an unraced Urban Sea was among the herd. That's one. Another version is that David Tsui raised his hand and bought Urban Sea, for about $50,000, at an auction in France.
Either way, Cash Asmussen got off Urban Sea to ride a horse that ran 16th in the Arc. The mount on Urban Sea fell to young Eric Saint-Martin, whose father Yves had won the Arc four times before him. Eric Saint-Martin had a cup of coffee in Southern California, before weight drove him to steady success in Hong Kong. I remember interviewing Saint-Martin around a condominium swimming pool in Playa Del Rey. He was a teenager and it seems like about a hundred years ago.
The day Urban Sea won the Arc, David Tsui's wife stayed away from Longchamp because she was too nervous to watch, and her husband made only a token bet on their horse. New to the game, Tsui had already acquired a superstition or two. "If you put down a very big bet, it's bad luck," he said.
Fast-forward to this year's Epsom Derby. Sea the Stars should have gone off favored, but shortly before post time two bets of about $82,000 apiece came in on Fame and Glory, trainer Aidan O'Brien's horse. Fame and Glory wasn't good enough that day, nor could he outfinish Sea the Stars more recently, in the Irish Champion Stakes. Mick Kinane, Sea the Stars' 50-year-old jockey, told reporters afterwards that the colt is "one of those landmark horses that come along every 25 to 30 years. He's the nearest living thing to a machine."
William Hill, the British bookmaker, has Sea the Stars as the 2-1 favorite in the Breeders' Cup Classic. Zenyatta, the undefeated mare, is next at 4-1. It's always possible that neither horse will run in the Classic. But if they do, Rachel Alexandra can stay home and there'll still be enough to sink your teeth into.