California Chrome’s Run is Hollywood Worthy

We’ll soon find out if California Chrome becomes the first Triple Crown winner in 36 years. Win or lose, Justin Zackal says the horse is already proof that there is no set formula for success.

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In a rather forgettable episode of the 1990s sitcom “Perfect Strangers,” distant cousins Larry Appleton and Balki Bartokomous bought a racehorse for a mere $2,200. The sluggish horse, Larry’s Fortune, is later diagnosed with an incurable lung disorder. To avoid euthanasia, Balki rescues the horse, taking into their Chicago apartment where he concocts a medicine of, among other things, yak’s tail and buzzard bones that he used as a sheepherder in his native country of Mypos.

The horse survived and then Larry sold it for $2,000, but not before learning from Balki that a side effect of the medicine caused sheep to become “frisky” and “run like the wind.” Larry tries in vain to bet on Larry’s Fortune, a 100-to-1 long-shot winner, but Balki already hedged their bets with a $2 ticket to cover the remaining $200 of their investment.

Could a Hollywood plot as outrageous as this play out in horse racing’s Triple Crown this year?

To use Balki’s catchphrase, “Well, of course not, don’t be ridiculous.”

But we do have this similarity: A couple of dumbasses bought a cheap racehorse as first-time owners and despite—or because of—dire medical circumstances, they’re sitting on a winner.

And we have proof that the science of racehorse breeding makes about as much sense as yak’s tail and buzzard bones. All the $30,000 stud fees paid to thicken a horse’s racing genes and you still have the unlikeliest of thoroughbreds leaving all the blue bloods in his dust.

Meet California Chrome. This chestnut-colored colt is named for his home state and the white patch of his face called a horse’s chrome. But his chrome is covered on race day by a purple and green blinker hood bearing the monogram D.A.P.

Meet the Dumb-Ass Partners (DAP). That would be California Chrome’s owners, Steve Coburn and Perry Martin, who came up with the name since they paid $8,000 for a small, underperforming horse named Love The Chase whose stable groom said anyone who would pay money for the horse would be a dumbass. Love The Chase foaled California Chrome in 2011.

After paying $2,000 to breed Love The Chase with a 10-year-old stallion named Lucky Pulpit, the DAP’s investment initially seemed ill-fated. When born, California Chrome’s crooked right forefoot dragged along his mother’s uterine wall leaving her severely injured.

For several weeks, Chrome was quarantined with his mother, who was connected to a catheter through which she received medication. With all that special attention, farm staff fed Chrome many of those Mrs. Pasture horse cookies that he still devours.

“He got a lot of attention, and he learned that people were good,” the farm’s veterinarian, Jeanne Bowers-Lepore, told Sports Illustrated.

Who knows, maybe that’s the secret ingredient to California Chrome’s success. In “Perfect Strangers,” when Larry fed his horse Balki’s medicine, he would remove the parsley, thinking it was only a garnish and not part of the concoction. The horse was never cured until Larry left it in.

Unlike Larry and Balki, the Dumb-Ass Partners were smart enough not to sell their horse. Coburn and Martin were offered $6 million for a 51% share of California Chrome, and that was before he won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes, the first two legs of the Triple Crown.

California Chrome enters Saturday’s Belmont Stakes one win shy of ending horse racing’s 36-year drought. Sure, there have been 12 other horses since 1978 that won the first two legs of the Triple Crown, only to lose on Belmont’s longer 1.5-mile track. Among them were great stories, like Funny Cide, owned by six high school friends from upstate New York who traveled to races in a yellow school bus. But even Funny Cide was purchased for $75,000.

There are more facets to California Chrome’s story that would fit well into a movie script. You have the eccentric Coburn, who wears a cowboy hat and still works as a press operator for a company that makes magnetic strips for credit cards and hotel room keys. You have the trainer, Art Sherman, a 77-year-old horse racing lifer who won at the Kentucky Derby in 1955 with a horse named Swaps and never returned until this year with California Chrome. You have adversity with Chrome’s two sixth-place finishes last fall, including one during which another jockey accidentally whipped Chrome in the face. Then you have the tactical decision to replace jockey Alberto Delgado with Victor Espinoza, a decision that resulted in Chrome’s meteoric rise, including six straight wins. You can even throw in last week’s nasal strip controversy.

That’s what gives sports it appeal: a great story. That’s why television producers delicately script the coverage of the Olympics with back-stories. That’s why many Americans have watched more boxing movies in the last 20 years than boxing matches. Boxing and horse racing were once giants on the sporting landscape, mostly because of America’s appetite for gambling, but their demise has much to do with both sports lacking a strong governing organization.

Many believe a Triple Crown winner will restore some of horse racing’s popularity, a panacea akin to Balki throwing the parsley into the mix. Perhaps casual fans are apathetic from all the hype over possible perfection only to be left disappointed 12 times since 1978, including eight times in the last 16 years.

Horse racing’s last dry spell was quenched by the greatest thoroughbred of all time, Secretariat, who in 1973 won the first Triple Crown in 25 years by setting records in all three of the Crown’s legs, records that still stand today.

Unlike Secretariat in 1973, California Chrome was not on the cover of Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated in the week leading up to the Belmont Stakes. Chrome’s Kentucky Derby time was rather slow from a historical standpoint, but his time of 1:54.84 in the Preakness Stakes was the fastest since Big Brown in 2008, and Chrome’s strong finish at the Preakness suggests that he can endure the extra half-kilometer at Belmont.

California Chrome might not be the best ever and his sport’s future doesn’t depend on him winning, but a win at the Belmont Saturday would provide this much-needed reminder: success isn’t an exact science.

It doesn’t take funding from some corporate syndicate. It doesn’t take perfection from our very first step. Seeing that Dumb-Ass blinker hood and crooked right forefoot cross the finish line first will be proof. It also doesn’t take some secret recipe from a needle or a sheepherder’s elixir.

It takes trust. It takes learning that people are good, and although someone may whip you in the face to get ahead, you can overcome adversity if you remain persistent in your belief that you can succeed.

“We just hope that this horse is letting America know that the little guy can win,” Coburn said in the SI article.

Am I pulling for California Chrome to win on Saturday?

You bet your yak’s tail I am!

Photo: AP