THREE the hard way
Posted on 06/05/2004 12:46:12 AM PDT by carlo3b
The Triple Crown, and Smarty Jones, can he do it?Move over Seabiscuit, we have Smarty Jones to keep us on the edge of our seats..
Saturday June 5, Smarty Jones could become only the second horse in history to have a shot at being an undefeated Triple Crown winner behind the fabulous Seattle Slew. Even the threat of rain can't dampen the excitement of the Belmont Stakes, as Smarty Jones goes for the whole enchilada, the coveted Triple Crown.The Triple Crown is comprised of three annual horse races: the Kentucky Derby (held on the first Saturday in May), the Preakness Stakes (held on the third Saturday in May), and the Belmont Stakes (held on the second Saturday in June).
Though all of the races were established in the late 1800s, the notion of the Triple Crown wasn't conceived until 1930, the year Gallant Fox claimed the honor. The title wasn't official, however, until very recently. In 1987, the three race tracks created the Triple Crown Challenge and offered a $5 million bonus to any horse that won all three races.
It's no easy feat for a horse to win the Triple Crown. To date, only 11 horses have managed it. They are:
Seventeen horses have come close, winning the Derby and the Preakness, only to miss their shot by blowing the Belmont.
- Sir Barton (1919)
- Gallant Fox (1930)
- Omaha (1935)
- War Admiral (1937)
- Whirlaway (1941)
- Count Fleet (1943)
- Assault (1946)
- Citation (1948)
- Secretariat (1973)
- Seattle Slew (1977)
- Affirmed (1978)
Sadly, Seattle Slew, the only undefeated Triple Crown champion, died May 08, 2002, on the 25th anniversary of his triple crown victory, at the ripe old age of 28. Now that he is gone, there are no Triple Crown champions are still living.What happens if...
IF a colt like Smarty Jones wins the Kentucky Derby and The Preakness it causes such a stir on the general public and the racing industry, you should see what it does to breeding farms and stallion managers. Everyone, I mean everyone in the thoroughbred breeding business wants to have the next hot stallion prospect, and nothing is hotter than classic performance and the promise of a Triple Crown...The hot competition among the leading thoroughbred breeding farms for the season's best prospects is typically so intense that many farms have spend gazillions on young horses, without any racing records, when they were just 2 year-olds, and IF a horse connected to that bloodline wins the Kentucky Derby with his breeding future still undecided, there is a wild rush of speculation and activity around the new classic winner, and every possible bloodline connection..
That is already happening in the case of Smarty Jones. This dynamic colt's victory in the Derby impressed breeders more than some of the handicappers, and some farms approached his owners, Pat and Roy Chapman, and their representatives after the first classic. His dashing victory in the Preakness, however, made everyone a believer..
Nothing brings that story home to me any more than what happened to me when a maverick horse, John Henry won the worlds richest horse race at the time, the Arlington Million, and as such the Horse Of The Year, for a second time.. I just happened to be at Arlington Park racetrack on the day it happened. John Henry with ham-bones for knees and crazy as heck, was the emotional favorite to win the race.. and win he did, he won in convincing fashion.
He was already a racing legend because of his unconventional breeding, unusual physique and old age.. truly a storybook ending.. That day, he became the highest earning horse in history, and trust me, everyone became a believer about him as well. The only problem was, John Henry was a gelding (meaning, castrated.. gulp) so how could anyone benefit from his breeding? This posed a dilemma, or as I saw it, an opportunity, so I thought.
John Henry's sire, (his father), Ole Bob Bowers, was an unknown, undistinguished, and unruly stallion (understated), standing at a hayseed horse farm in rural Michigan. We jumped into our truck before the shouting was over and I was the first to reach the farm with a horse trailer and more money than horse sense. First I tried to buy the stallion, but after an all day haggling session, we agreed on a price but I was saved because we couldn't get the lunatic stallion out of the barn and into my trailer.. so I did the next best thing.. I bought all of the broodmares that were bred to him, in hopes of finding a diamond-in-the-rough.
I sold a partnership in almost every horse before I got them out of my trailers.. All of those foals eventually won at least one race, but none lived up to the promise, most should have been sued for breach of promise... I guess it was worth the emotional roller coaster ride.. sigh....... but I digress..
IF, barring some unforeseen circumstance, Smarty Jones wins it all, he yields his owners and breeders a larger return as a stallion prospect, he offers much more than he could hope to win on the racetrack. With the promise of becoming the next Triple Crown champion, his value has been placed at upwards of $30 million, according to industry insiders.
GOOD LUCK SMARTY JONES, we're pulling for ya..
The favorite doesn't always win, but with this horse's background, it would be nice..This little guy has a story right out of a Hollywood script..
He's a pip-squeak by racehorse standards. His breeder/trainer was murdered before he was even born, and he cracked his head open, in a starting gate accident that almost ended his racing career before it ever got off the ground. However, this diminutive chestnut colt won the Kentucky Derby on 1 May in 2:04:06, and the Preakness on 15 May in 1:55:59.Smarty Jones has an unusual background for a top thoroughbred: he comes from Someday Farm, a small Pennsylvania operation owned by Roy and Pat Chapman, and is based at Philadelphia Park, considered a second-tier racecourse. His owner, Roy Chapman almost sold all of his horses after loosing his trainer, and even suffers from severe emphysema, and neither the new trainer John Servis, nor jockey Stewart Elliot had ever competed in a Kentucky Derby before the 2004 race.
No matter the humble beginnings, Smarty Jones was undefeated in six races leading up to the Derby, and with his win there he collected a $5 million prize offered to any horse who could win the Rebel Stakes, the Arkansas Derby and the Kentucky Derby. If he triumphs at the Belmont Stakes on 5 June 2004, he'll collect another $5 million prize for winning all three legs of the Triple Crown.
His unusual name? Well, Smarty Jones is named for the mother of Pat Chapman, Mildrid McNair, whose childhood nickname was Smarty Jones. McNair died in 1989 and the horse was born on her birthday in 2001...
We'll soon know .. fingers crossed.. :)
Lets pull for the little guy!
I love several things about the horse; but after a head injury that had everyone nearly giving up on him...well, you've got to love the SPIRIT!
He won the Preakness going away.. He does remind me of Seabiscuit, and if you haven't seen the movie yet, you are really missing something special..
THREE the hard way
Is it possible to bet on a horse to win the Triple Crown before the first race is run? I'm wondering how much someone could have won if they made such a bet on Secretariat or Seattle Slew.
What were the odds on Smarty Jones winning the Triple Crown? (if such odds were given)
He is the 2-5 morning line favorite will get even worse as it gets closer to the start..
And yes you could have bet on any horse to win the Triple Crown, before the each race.. the odds must have been in outer space before the Derby and have dropped like a rock as he won the first 2..
He is a great-grandson of Foolish Pleasure, the 1975 Kentucky Derby winner, and a great-great-grandson of Secretariat, the 1973 Triple Crown winner.
A great-great-grandfather, Northern Dancer, won the 1964 Derby and Preakness Stakes before becoming perhaps the most successful sire of the second half of the 20th century.
And among Smarty Jones' 32 great-great-great grandfathers are four more winners of Triple Crown races: Nashua, Bold Ruler, Tim Tam and Native Dancer, the colt known as "The Gray Ghost," who suffered a close and controversial loss in the Derby, then won the Preakness and Belmont.
Native Dancer's influence on the breed remains evident today, with 17 of the 18 starters in the Kentucky Derby traceable to him within six generations, largely through his grandson Northern Dancer, present in 16 of the starters' pedigrees.
Yet geneticists caution against making too much of ancestors beyond three or four generations, particularly in the small and inbred world of thoroughbred racehorses, where common ancestors are routine.
"It's like shuffling a huge pack of cards when you cross two horses together and expecting to get the same hand dealt," said Steve Harrison, managing director of Thoroughbred Genetics Co., a British company that uses DNA analysis to advise clients on breeding and purchases. "If you go back 12 generations it would be like shuffling 2,000 decks of cards, each containing 60,000 cards."
Consider, too, how many offspring a successful stallion produces. Native Dancer sired 304 foals in a relatively brief career. His son, Raise a Native, sired 863, and grandson Northern Dancer sired 645.
Steven Roman, creator of the modern theory of dosage, a pedigree classification system, limits his analysis to four generations.
"You can make any argument you want about any horse if you go back far enough," Roman said. "What matters is what's winning on the racetrack. It's still the final arbiter."
— Robyn Norwood
Yes, I've seen it twice. And, there certainly are similarities...it's somewhat spine-tingling!
Going For the Trifecta
By Andrew Beyer
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page D01
Smarty Jones is an overwhelming favorite to win Saturday's Belmont Stakes and become history's 12th Triple Crown winner, but handicappers can raise a few legitimate questions about his supposed invulnerability.
Will his stamina-deprived pedigree hurt him at the 1 1/2-mile distance of the Belmont? Will the presence of the speedster Purge force Smarty Jones into a destructive duel for the lead? Will Rock Hard Ten, who finished second in the Preakness in only his fourth career start, improve enough to reverse the result at Pimlico?
Yet these issues are minor compared to the factor that has governed previous attempts to win the sport's greatest prize. The key question Saturday is this: Will the gods of racing permit Smarty Jones to become a Triple Crown winner?
I am convinced that the gods protect the sanctity of the Triple Crown, preventing unexceptional horses from winning it, because there is no other way to explain the extraordinary history of the three events.
In theory, a good-but-not-great 3-year-old should be able to hit a streak of top form for five weeks in the spring and win three consecutive races -- particularly in a year when the competition is weak. In every other sport, unlikely individuals or teams get hot at the right time and win the greatest championships: last year Jim Furyk won the U.S. Open and the wild-card Florida Marlins captured the World Series.
Yet nothing of the sort has happened in the Triple Crown since the flowering of the American thoroughbred industry after World War II. From 1948 to the present, the only horses to sweep the series have been Citation (1948), Secretariat (1973), Seattle Slew (1977) and Affirmed (1978) -- four of the sport's all-time greats. Each of them was a 2-year-old champion who came into the 3-year-old classics seeking to verify his superstar status, and each of them went on to greater glory after the Triple Crown.
Plenty of less-than-great horses have tried to add their names to this list, including four in the last six years: Funny Cide, War Emblem, Charismatic and Real Quiet. Their credentials were all imperfect. (Funny Cide, for example, had never won a Grade I stakes before the Derby and Preakness -- and hasn't won one since.) Each was favored to win the Belmont; Real Quiet looked as if he couldn't lose when he turned into the stretch with a commanding lead. Yet each of them failed. The lesson is clear: The gods have decreed that a horse must be great in order to win the Triple Crown.
Of course, there are some conventional handicapping reasons to explain why the Belmont often thwarts horses who succeeded in Louisville and Baltimore. The 1 1/2-mile distance is a different game, and it has foiled horses with limited stamina or a one-dimensional front-running style -- such as War Emblem. The distance also plays against horses who have won the shorter Derby and Preakness by making one bold move on the turn -- horses such as Real Quiet and Charismatic. Horses with even-paced styles are more suited to the Belmont distance.
Having watched and admired the great champions of the 1970s, I felt ambivalent about the Triple Crown aspirants in recent years, because I knew they didn't deserve to have their names alongside Secretariat in the record books. If a horse such as War Emblem had succeeded, the Triple Crown would never again seem so special.
But I believe that Smarty Jones is worthy of a Triple Crown.
Unlike the Triple Crown winners since 1948, Smarty Jones didn't go into the classics as an acclaimed champion. However, that wasn't his fault. If he had been part of a prominent stable in New York or California, he might have been viewed as a budding superstar from the outset of his career. Because he was based at Philadelphia Park, he received little national attention, even though he won all three of his races by a combined total of 28 lengths and recorded one of the fastest speed figures of the year by a 2-year-old. He stayed out of the limelight, winning early-season races for 3-year-olds against moderate competition in Arkansas. But after winning the Derby and Preakness, the latter by the biggest margin in the race's 128-year history, he has already put himself in the rarest of company. Only two colts before him have won the first two legs of the Triple Crown and come into the Belmont undefeated -- Majestic Prince and Seattle Slew. Smarty Jones's performances as a 3-year-old have been at least as good as Seattle Slew's. He has done more than enough for the racing gods to bless him.
Of course, he still has to deal with some practical matters, such as his suitability to the 1 1/2-mile distance. But he has already mocked the limitations of his pedigree by winning at 1 1/4 miles. He has proved that he is tractable enough to sit behind another speed horse and make his move when his jockey wishes. This controllable speed gives him the perfect style for the Belmont. And Smarty Jones doesn't have much meaningful competition. While Rock Hard Ten is likely to improve, he is unlikely to make up the 11 1/2 lengths by which he was beaten in the Preakness.
Smarty Jones figures to win Saturday and, if he does, no one ought to question whether he deserves to be on the illustrious list of Triple Crown winners. The only debate will be over where he ranks among the sport's elite.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
Really.. Now he has to winn. .Come on Smarty.. :)
Hmmmmmmmm.. Ok.. We'll see.. :)
Imagine how RHT's jock felt, after that bad start and then very nicely working his way up to get into a great position at the final turn, to watch Smarty just switch into warp drive and disappear....
Out of you, I expected a recipe for the losers....
Go Smarty Jones! Watch this race if you want an exciting couple of minutes this afternoon. If you want to experience the exhilaration first hand, go to your local racetrack and watch, listen and experience the crowd as the race (being broadcast) goes off.
BINGO.. I thought the very same thing.. I had an outstanding filly (Fan The Fire, a beautiful granddaughter of Secretariat) that was so unruly in the starting, she would leave her race at the post.. That big red witch, won a few, but finished 3rd.. 6 times! GRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
How does Smarty Jones and Master David sound for an exacta bet????
Don't kid yourself, I wanted to cook more than one horse after a close race. Racing was a hobby for me get out of the Restaurants and into the sunshine and get some fresh air. I convienced myself it was good for my health...Bwhahahahahahahahahah I almost had strokes watching those losers chew up my money.. I want to chew on them just to get even.. LOL
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