Can Silver Charm Give Racing Another Hero?

Trainer Bob Baffert and Mike Pegram were talking after the Preakness.

“You’re going to have the first horse to win the Triple Crown and not be favored in any of the races,” said Pegram, the horse owner who bankrolled Baffert when he made the switch from quarter horses to thoroughbreds in the early 1990s.

At the time of the conversation, Pegram was probably right. Just as sure as the Belmont Stakes is 1 1/2 miles, Captain Bodgit had the look of the favorite in New York on June 7. The Belmont is longer than the other Triple Crown races--the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness--and many would have reasoned that the added distance would have helped the late-running Captain Bodgit and hurt Derby and Preakness winner Silver Charm.

But now, with Captain Bodgit’s career-ending tendon injury, Silver Charm is assured that he can’t go into the record books with Gallant Fox (1930) and Assault (1946), the only Triple Crown champions who weren’t favored in the Belmont. The nine other 3-year-olds that swept the series went off at 4-5 or less in the Belmont. Count Fleet was 1-20 against only two rivals in the 1943 Belmont. He paid $2.10 after he and jockey Johnny Longden completed the series sweep.

Silver Charm doesn’t get anything like that kind of respect at the windows, and while he will be favored in the Belmont, Free House, his familiar nemesis, and Touch Gold, the buzz horse after his gritty fourth in the Preakness, will lure the punters looking for better value.

Silver Charm is Baffert’s favorite but seldom the favorite in the parimutuels. He has run eight times, with five wins and three seconds, yet he has been favored only twice. This year, the gray colt has been favored only once in five starts.

In the Santa Anita Derby, he was 2-1 as the filly, Sharp Cat, drew the most money. In the Kentucky Derby, he was 4-1, the second choice behind Captain Bodgit; and at Pimlico, after being installed as the logical favorite on the morning line, Silver Charm went off the 3-1 third choice, after Captain Bodgit and Free House. Silver Charm had worked slowly before the Preakness, and Free House, besides working like an antelope, was ridden by the popular Kent Desormeaux, who was dubbed “Superman” by the fans when he broke records for winning races by the hundreds in Maryland in the 1980s.

The Pimlico crowd liked Captain Bodgit because he was a Maryland-based colt whose first serious running came at Laurel Park last year.

Of course, the jockey of the moment at Pimlico turned out to be Gary Stevens, who, by the Daily Racing Form’s count, hit Silver Charm 34 times as they survived the three-horse photo finish with Free House and Captain Bodgit. The 122nd Preakness will be part of racing anthologies as long as there’s celluloid and videotape.

After the race, Stevens and Bob Lewis, the co-owner of Silver Charm, talked about the enormous residual effect their colt will have on a game that has been able to count its pukka heroes on one hand in recent years.

“I’d love to see thoroughbred racing back on the cover of Sports Illustrated and Time magazine,” said Stevens, a rider not ignorant of publishing history. “It’s been a long time since that’s happened, and it can happen again with this horse.”

In 1973, Secretariat, the barometer for an era, not only landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated, he was up front on Time and Newsweek as well. Joe McGinnes, the former sportswriter who got a better offer, was traipsing the country then, looking for true American heroes, and he put Secretariat at the top of his list.

By the 1980s, however, there were cover editors in a lot of tall buildings who were convinced that horse racing does next to nothing for newsstand sales. Cigar, winning 16 consecutive races, was headed for the cover of Sports Illustrated last summer, but when he was beaten at Del Mar the story cooled off quickly. Bill Nack, who writes racing for the magazine, said with the exception of jockey Julie Krone, there hasn’t been a racing cover there since Sunny’s Halo won the Kentucky Derby in 1983.

The focus on racing, which already has picked up some momentum, will be fully renewed if Silver Charm can win one more race. Merely the prospect of another Triple Crown champion has people within the industry salivating. “Belmont Park,” Baffert said, “will be using seats they haven’t used in years.”

Horse Racing Notes

The Belmont Stakes has only seven probable starters: Silver Charm, Free House, Touch Gold, Wild Rush, Crypto Star, Zede and Irish Silence. Because Frank Stronach has an ownership interest in Touch Gold and Wild Rush, they would run as a betting entry. Touch Gold, fourth in the Preakness despite cutting his leg in a near fall out of the gate, is back on the track at Belmont Park and a decision about the Belmont will be made in a day or two. . . . Belmont Park officials wanted Captain Bodgit because of the hot rivalry with Silver Charm, but at least the track will gain 33 or more seats because of his absence. Captain Bodgit’s owners needed almost 60 tickets for the Wood Memorial, which their colt won last month at Aqueduct. . . . There are six probable starters for Monday’s $400,000 Hollywood Turf Handicap: Sandpit, Marlin, Sunshack, Talloires, Rainbow Dancer and Big Sky Jim. Sandpit, winner of the race last year, is the high weight at 123 pounds, three more than Marlin. . . . Gentlemen will skip the Massachusetts Handicap and aim for the Hollywood Gold Cup on June 29. . . . Northern Afleet, Touch Gold’s stablemate, will run Monday in the $400,000 Metropolitan Handicap at Belmont. . . . Hello, eighth in the Kentucky Derby, will go to grass in the Cinema Handicap at Hollywood Park on May 31.