Matt Slocum/AP Co-owner Steven Coburn kisses California Chrome on his controversial nasal strips after the horse won Saturday's Preakness to set up a chance for the Triple Crown on June 7 at Belmont Park. If California Chrome had been banned or scratched from ! the Belmont Stakes over nasal strips, horse racing as a sport should have been buried alongside Secretariat at Claiborne Farm.
Instead, three stewards at Belmont Park did the sensible thing Monday and there will be a race on June 7 that actually matters to a lot of people; that will have crossover appeal to casual sports fans and make a bundle for the track.
"Equine nasal strips do not enhance equine performance nor do they pose a risk to equine health or safety and as such do not need to be regulated," New York State Gaming Commission Equine Medical Director Scott E. Palmer wrote, contributing to the decision.
There's all that, and then there's this: You don't turn your back on 100,000-plus paying customers, which is what you'll get now with this horse in the starting gate, instead of maybe 60,000. Everybody knows that the Belmont Stakes is really two very different races, depending on whether a Triple Crown is in the offing. It's a brutally long, high-priced race that tests colts to their fullest. But it's also the third and final leg of an improbable dream, one that hasn't come true now in 36 years.
Back then, in 1978, Affirmed was the third Triple Crown winner in five years and everyone thought this sort of thing was going to keep happening, again and again. Then slowly everything changed, from the breeding to the training. Horses were bred to be faster, more attractive for sale, not to go the long haul. They became more fragile and were trained to race less frequently, so that the Triple Crown was too much of an ordeal.
Modern horses that won the first leg, or the first two legs, couldn't finish the job. We had this sort of disappointment just two years ago, with I'll Have Another, a Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner. He was scratched just a day before Belmont with tendonitis and was retired right there from racing. A huge Saturday became just another day at the track.
California Chrome seems healthy, however, ready to go. Maybe he can't hold up to the full mile and a half, but a lot of people want to see him try. Now, in all likelihood, we get to see this colt run and we get to write about the Dumb Ass Partners again, who bought the horse's dam for $8,000 and cashed in big.
California Chrome isn't quite a mutt. Some of that is mythology. His grandfather, Pulpit, has breeding lines to Swaps, a Kentucky Derby winner and is therefore a descendent of the legendary Man o' War. But the owners of California Chrome aren't rich Southerners and so that makes this tale at least somewhat unfamiliar and welcome.
The ruling by the stewards was a no-brainer from the start, though you couldn't be certain. Race officials have demonstrated at times a distinct lack of such gray matter. Considering the drug and fixing scandals of the past, the use of nasal strips was never a troublesome issue. They were perfectly legal in all other states. If anything, Palmer noted, there is research showing the strips may decrease the amount of bleeding associated with exercise-induced damage to the lungs.
That's a good thing, not a bad thing. Unlike Lasix, which is used for a similar purpose, there are no side effects, no damage to the kidneys or other organs. And those strips, unlike so many other things in racing, are transparently out there for everyone to see.
In any case, this matter goes away now. California Chrome and his management team are allowed to become the real story again over the next three weeks.
Racing gets out of its own way. Maybe that's the news here.
Source : http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more-sports/allowing-california-chrome-run-belmont-no-brainer-article-1.1797887
