Two down and one to glow!
In eight days, I’ll Have Another will attempt to light up the galaxy by adding the Belmont Stakes to his Kentucky Derby and Preakness triumphs to become the first thoroughbred to sweep the Triple Crown since Affirmed in 1978.
The excitement has begun. There already is an expectancy in the air, a scent in the breeze, that where 11 predecessors have failed I’ll Have Another just might seal the deal and engrave his name among the immortals.
It’s time. The electricity is inescapable. No matter where you turn you’re bombarded with: Can he do it? Friends who don’t know a racehorse from a rhinoceros are hooked. People who saw I’ll Have Another’s breath-snapping charge through the stretch to win the Preakness are captivated.
For some inexplicable reason, this run for glory caught the public’s fancy from the start. Incredibly, the biggest crowd ever to attend a day at the races in American history — 165,000 — swarmed into Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Derby and were rewarded with I’ll Have Another’s memorable chase — and capture — of Bodemeister.
When the caravan pulled into Pimlico for the Preakness, the biggest crowd ever to attend a sports event in Baltimore — 121,000 — jammed into Old Hilltop to see an even more thrilling replay.
Now it’s New York and the Belmont, the ultimate test, a mile and a half, a sand trap that has foiled some of the finest thoroughbreds of the past century, a challenge that will plumb I’ll Have Another to the depths of his pedigree.
He might set a record here, too, the way tickets have been flying off the shelves. Belmont’s record was 120,000 in 2004 when Smarty Jones’ Triple Crown try was blocked by longshot Birdstone.
Will I’ll Have Another make it? He has as good a chance as any for one reason: his running style. He is not a brilliant streak of lightning like Secretariat or a handsome fancy-dan like Seattle Slew. He’s a gritty, dogged little battler who settles a few lengths off his prey. Then, when the bell rings, he goes after them, runs them down and beats them by inches.
It’s a style guaranteed to give you the thrill of your life — or a heart attack.
In the Santa Anita Derby, he closed slowly but furiously through the stretch to beat Creative Cause by a nose, the thinnest winning margin in racing. In Kentucky, he gave Bodemeister a three-length lead at the furlong pole, usually an unassailable lead in the Derby, but he came flying, caught him and whupped him.
Then the biggest shock of all, the Preakness. Bodemeister, again, had a three-length unbeatable lead at the furlong pole after setting comfortable fractions. He had it wrapped, tied and bowed. This time, I’ll Have Another had no chance.
But that little chestnut sonofagun put his head down, and inch by inch, wore Bode down and collared him by a neck on the line. The horse is a bulldog.
Bode’s jockey, Mike Smith, has been around a long time. He has done it all, seen it all. But even he was dumbfounded. “I swear, I don’t know how he ran me down, man,” he said after the race still in a daze.
Maybe that’s why the whole country seems to have fallen in love with I’ll Have Another. Like Karen, the bartender at Jack Rooney’s Crab House by the ocean in Long Branch, N.J. This is the Jersey racing crowd’s watering hole, as Esposito’s was for the Seattle Slew Triple Crown saga.
Karen knows naught about racing. “But every day at work, customers are always saying ‘I’ll have another,’ ’’ she said. “So I bet I’ll Have Another in the Derby, then I bet him in the Preakness and I’m sure as heck going to bet him in the Belmont.”
We’ll all drink to that.