“Embarassing,” George Smith, the Ohio State golf standout who is recognized as one of the all-time breeders and owners in the history of Ohio thoroughbreds said of Coburn’s continued meltdowns since California Chrome finished a dead heat fourth at Belmont. “It’s just total embarrassment. In this game you lose more than you ever win and you have to be prepared for that. Obviously this guy was not.”
Lee Midkiff – chairman of the Springboro and California-based Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, one of the most successful racehorse syndicates in the nation and the owners of Matterhorn, the eighth-place finisher at Belmont – said Coburn’s rants have been “unfortunate.”
“At the end of the day it should be about the horse, not the owner,” said Midkiff. “California Chrome has done the job race after race. And fourth at the Belmont is not failure by any means. He’s a phenomenal horse and I can’t see anything that will not make him the three-year-old horse of the year.
“You don’t want someone overshadowing the horse and that’s what happening now and it’s too bad because it’s been a wonderful story.”
California Chrome – a low-budget thoroughbred with an aging trainer and two little-known owners – had captured the imagination of the sports world after winning the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness and positioning himself to win the most elusive title in all of sports.
It’s been 36 years since Affirmed won the Triple Crown. Since then, 13 horses have won the Derby and Preakness only to fall short at the Belmont.
Fifteen times since 1978 – including with Saturday’s victor, Tonalist – the winner has not raced in either the Derby of the Preakness. Nine of the 13 horses who were vying for Triple Crown history in that span were beaten by horses that had not competed in both the Derby and Preakness.
Chrome broke from the two gate Saturday and veered over into Matterhorn, who ended up stepping on his right front foot. Whether it was the injury, the grueling mile-and-a-half distance or the challenge of fresher horses, California Chrome didn’t have his usual burst in the stretch.
Tonalist, who was running for just the second time since Feb. 22, won by a head over Commissioner, who also had skipped the Derby and Preakness. Third place Medal Count and Wicked Strong, who finished fourth with California Chrome, had both run the Derby but not the Preakness.
That scenario set Coburn off when the NBC interviewed him immediately after the race and his ire has not abated since.
“It’s not fair to the horses that have been in the game since Day One,” he told NBC. “It’s all or nothing. This is not fair to the horses that have been running their guts out for these people that believe in them.”
Then Coburn got personal: “This is a coward’s way, in my opinion. If you’ve got a horse, run him in all three.”
Later, when questioned by Yahoo Sports, he got nastier: “They’re a bunch of g—dam cheaters. If you have a horse that doesn’t have enough points to run in the Kentucky Derby, he shouldn’t be able to run in the Triple Crown. They’re g—dam cheaters.”
Sunday, on Good Morning America, Coburn was still angry: “You might compare this to a triathlon. You know you’ve got to swim and you’ve got to bicycle and you’ve got to run. You don’t make it to the run if you don’t do the other two.”
While Coburn’s argument does have some valid points – the Triple Crown challenge is skewered against the best horses and the Belmont does favor competitors who are fresher or later-developing – his timing was poor and he hurt his cause when he made his attack so personal.
Art Sherman, the classy 77-year-old trainer of California Chrome tried to diffuse the situation Sunday.
“Those horses aren’t cowards and the people aren’t cowards,” he told the media gathered at his Belmont barn. “I think it was a little out of context myself, but, hey, he was at the heat of the moment. And don’t forget he’s a fairly new owner. Sometimes the emotions get in front of you. He hasn’t been in the game long and hasn’t had any bad luck.”
Midkiff stressed that while everyone focuses on the Triple Crown series, the three races “are individual stakes races, each with its own history and deep with tradition. They’ve been put together as a series for marketing purposes, but in any way, shape or form they stand on their own as races.”
Danza, which Midkiff and his partners raced to a third-place finish at the Derby, had always been targeted to skip the Preakness and return for the Belmont, though that effort was sidelined when the colt struggled a bit in training.
Morgan said: “Training if like tuning a piano, it’s a very delicate thing. But that’s the beauty of racing. You put the horse where you think it belongs at the time you think it should be running and against the horses you pick out. If you try for the Triple Crown, you know what you’ll be facing beforehand. It’s supposed to be tough.”
Smith felt the same: “The truth is this horse wasn’t as good as Seattle Slew, Affirmed or Secretariat (the last three Triple Crown winners) and he didn’t deserve to be standing alongside them.”
When Secretariat won the Belmont by 31 lengths in 1973, three of the other four horses in the race had not run the Preakness. Seattle Slew (1977) and Affirmed (1978) both won the Belmont against fields that mostly had not run all three races.
Besides California Chrome, only General A Rod, who finished seventh of the 11 horses Saturday, and Ride On Curlin, who was last Saturday, ran all three races.
“The thing about the Triple Crown, it signifies the horse who’s the best of all three year olds, regardless of who shows up on any given day,” Midkiff said.
Coburn, though, wasn’t relenting Sunday. On ESPN he said if anybody wanted to call him on this they could. And then he gave out his phone number.
A lot of racing folks, though, say they don’t need his number, they already have it.
“If you are going to say all this you should say it before you get beat,” Morgan said. “It makes you look like a bad loser.”
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