Angus McNae's Racing UK Blog
	Thursday 1st May 2014

Chrome can put in a platinum Derby performance

I have heard it said that the Kentucky Derby is not what it was. Rubbish.

It is still a magnificent spectacle at an historic racetrack. It is still a gruelling test of a three-year-old, it still resonates deeply with the international racing community and it is still the greatest two minutes in sport.

The truth, though, is that the three-year-olds competing in the race are not what they were. By this I mean that over the last three or four years the standard required to win the race has dropped sharply. Whereas a winner of the Derby used to be able to run a Beyer speed figure of 112+ now the race can be won by a horse running 105.

The decline in the standard required to win the race has coincided with the sport experiencing a tumultuous period in its existence. Betting handle is down at most tracks in the USA, the spectre of drug abuse and horse maltreatment, courtesy of trainer Steve Asmussen and others, just will not go away and the clamour for the return of dirt at the expense of synthetic surfaces has left the sport in a position of constant flux.

The mess it finds itself in is not one that will be remedied in a hurry. A start would be to find a champion, a phoenix to rise from the ashes who could win the Triple Crown and give people belief in the sport again because declining popularity can only lead to apathy.

The racing authorities do not just need a champion to raise the profile of the sport, but also to inject (I get the irony) confidence into it.

I cannot sit here and write a lengthy blog pretending to be able to create a blueprint for positive change in the sport, but I desperately want to see it. Surely a start is to decide whether they are serious about horse welfare issues and thus embrace synthetics, or they should return to dirt. If the latter is the case then as Bob Baffert once told me in an interview they must make sure those dirt tracks are maintained properly. One or the other is what I am saying.

Given that the Kentucky Derby is run on dirt but there have been an increasing number of synthetic surfaces in the States it is perhaps no surprise that the quality of the great race has been diluted. Horses that would have learned their trade on dirt in the past and learned to race at a tempo for the surface have been given the opportunity on synthetics.

Some horses who in years gone by would have turned up for the Run For The Roses are now sitting it out under a banner marked ‘synthetic horse.’

Therefore perhaps we should accept the declining standard because that is one of the sacrifices we should make for horse welfare, or perhaps we should look to having a Kentucky Derby run on a synthetic surface. The latter is just not going to happen - the good old boys would not have it. Their old Kentucky homes were built on God’s earth, not on rubber and fibre.

The decline in standards is a shame but with it comes a window of opportunity for others who could pounce amid the chaos and make history.

This is what I thought Jamie Osborne would do with Toast Of New York, the winner of the UAE Derby at Meydan last month.

I fully understand why the decision to swerve the race was taken given the travelling required, that he would be racing on dirt and not Tapeta and his hard race in Dubai.

This was a chance of a lifetime for a horse like Toast of New York and maybe the gamble should have been taken. Maybe the lesson will be one that is not lost on Godolphin, as the boys at Coolmore have already tried in the past few years with Master Of Hounds and Daddy Long Legs.

Time will tell.

Whatever the state of the race, finding the winner of it is still something that bragging rights are made of and my strong fancy for the race is the favourite California Chrome.

Not only do I fancy him to win, he could just be the horse to put horseracing back on the map in America, the once in a lifetime horse that puts all other issues in the shade and brings hope and renewed vigour to the game.

California Chrome is the real deal. His demolition of the Santa Anita Derby field was wildly impressive, as were his previous three wins.

What's more, to a degree he has bucked the recent trend of trialists firing in below par figures. The mount of Victor Espinoza has posted two triple-digit Beyer speed figures at 107 and 105, and there is promise of more to come.

In short he could be the horse that we have been missing. He is a horse that can fire in a Beyer speed figure of 115 at Churchill Downs and then go to the Preakness Stakes on May 17, with realistic expectations of being the first horse to bag the Triple Crown since Affirmed in 1978.

To mention him in the same context of Seattle Slew, Secretariat and Affirmed, legends all, is to put him in a list where he has no right to be yet, but just when the sport in America needs a hero perhaps they have one and he is about to kickstart the sport beneath the twin spires.