On Saturday, the real American Pharoah showed up.
This was a tour-de-force victory, the kind of performance his backers had been waiting for. The Preakness Stakes may be a 1 3/16-mile race, but it was over after less than half a mile.
With Pharoah gliding effortlessly over the rain-soaked racetrack, his ears pricked forward in a playful sign that told his seven rivals behind him: "I'm just toying with you," there was no doubt who the winner of this race was. The only question was how much he'd prevail by.
This was a far cry from Kentucky Derby day, when Pharoah spent much of the race spinning his wheels. He endured 32 cracks of the whip from jockey Victor Espinoza that day en route to a narrow, hard-fought victory. In the Preakness, Espinoza tapped him, ever so lightly, just once and then shook the whip at him a few times before quickly putting it away and letting the horse coast to the finish line 7 lengths in front of his closest challenger.
The only truly anxious moments in the race came at the start. Pharoah broke a bit awkwardly and sluggishly, and for a few seconds it looked like he'd get boxed in behind other horses -- a bad place to be amid a torrential downpour for a colt that has never experienced the sting of having mud kicked in his face. Right then, Espinoza made the one key decision of the race, furiously encouraging Pharoah to use his speed and surge through a small opening on the rail to take the lead. It would prove to be an early knockout punch.
So while Pharoah's harshest critics -- those few non- believers who still linger out there -- will note that his top rivals drowned in the mud and slop being hurled backward by the leaders, effectively eliminating them from contention, this line of argument fails to miss a key point. Brilliantly fast horses like Pharoah make their own breaks in races. They're not dependent on what happens in front of them.
The colt now heads to New York in a bid to take the Belmont Stakes in three weeks and become the first Triple Crown winner since 1978. Of the 13 horses that have unsuccessfully attempted to pull off the feat over that time, perhaps only Spectacular Bid, one of the greatest thoroughbreds of the 20th century, arrived with a more gaudy resume.
After suffering a defeat in his debut race in California last August, Pharoah rebounded to take a stakes race a month later and hasn't stopped winning since. He's reeled off six straight victories -- all of them major stakes races and all, with the exception of the Derby, facile victories.
He will be an overwhelming favorite to win the Belmont. Without knowing the exact makeup of the field, it's hard to calculate a precise odds estimate, but my instinct tells me he'll go off somewhere around 1-2. That means a $2 wager would generate a profit of just $1 if successful.
After paying almost 3-1 in the Derby and almost 1-1 in the Preakness, both of which were prices I found attractive, odds of 1-2 would have no appeal to me.
The horse is a wonderful talent and I'm one of his biggest fans, but I'm also a cold-blooded gambler. And while Pharoah was busy expending energy beating up on his competition in the mud in Baltimore on Saturday (his third race in a span of just five weeks), several other top three-year-old colts were back in their barns, licking their wounds after the Derby.
They will be rested and ready when Pharoah arrives in New York. And they will offer fat odds. And I will bet on one of them to beat him. This is no time to let sentiment get in the way, not even with a Triple Crown on the line.
Sports on 05/18/2015