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| His status as the Kentucky Derby favorite is under fire, but California Chrome will have the last laugh. |
LOUISVILLE -- Think of the Kentucky Derby as the NFL Draft, except with big hats and mint juleps. Stay with me here: There is this draft prospect, and he has been a sensational college player for three seasons. In most of his games, he has looked like a grown man among adolescents, awaiting a bigger stage on which to ply his trade and earn recognition (along with buckets of money). It is clear that he is the best player in the country and come draft night, he will be the No. 1 overall selection. The winner, as it were. He gets the blanket of roses.
Then comes the (now expanded) silly season between the bowl games and the draft, during which the player suffers draft-value death by a thousand tiny cuts. Every one of his collegiate snaps is analyzed in the minutest detail, and small imperfections float to the surface, eventually becoming bigger imperfections under the harsh light of draft analysis. His once impeccable college career becomes the subject of debate. Was he really all that good? Was the competition all that strong?. Then come the holes in his character, personal flaws that might make him just a little less employable. In the days immediately leading to the draft, the player is a shell of his collegiate self, a carcass on the war room floor, picked at by vultures who are searching for better options.
Except sometimes the player survives all of this and emerges from the tunnel of scrutiny precisely where he started: As the best player on the board. Hashtag Clowney.
Back to the Derby. Twenty-seven days ago, a chestnut colt named California Chrome won the Santa Anita Derby, the most important West Coast prep race for the Kentucky Derby. It was Chrome's fourth consecutive stakes victory, by combined total of more than 24 lengths, and it was outrageously easy. In the home stretch, Chrome never felt the sting of jockey Victor Espinoza's whip and still finished 5 ¼ lengths in front of Hoppertunity, who three weeks earlier had won the Rebel Stakes, another key Derby prep, in Arkansas. After the Santa Anita Derby it was almost universally agreed that California Chrome was the deserving favorite for the Kentucky Derby and the best three-year-old racehorse in training, possibly by a wide margin. That was then.
Now we are on the eve of the running of the 140th Derby and California Chrome has undergone a full dose of draft-prospect dissection. He arrived in Kentucky by plane on Monday, only five days before the race, which many Derby analysts felt was too late to get accustomed to his surroundings. (Trainer Art Sherman had to awaken Chrome at 5 a.m. for a Tuesday morning jog, which concerned Sherman until he realized, "That's two in the morning for him.") Chrome has gone to the racetrack twice and some backstretchers have said that he hasn't looked comfortable running over the Churchill Downs surface, which was sloppy on Tuesday and muddy on Wednesday. "I don't think he liked it," said veteran trainer Dallas Stewart, who will saddle longshot Commanding Curve in the Derby. "He didn't look comfortable to me."
(On Thursday, after having seen California Chrome gallop twice, respected Daily Racing Form analyst Mike Welsch wrote, "He did not look comfortable at all galloping over a wet track here Wednesday and was stiff when coming out over a fast strip the following morning, before warming out of it and looking much the better the second time around the track. It's difficult to make an accurate assessment off just two sessions with no frame of reference, having never seen him trainer before. I have to respect him off his recent series of one-sided victories, but he's not giving off nearly the same kind of positive vibes training up to the race at Churchill Downs as last year's favorite and ultimate winner, Orb.")
Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/more/news/20140502/kentucky-derby-picks/#ixzz30ev7Gd00
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