Back in the Spotlight, California Chrome's Post-Breeders' Cup Plan Still Unclear

On the eve of the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic, the team behind California Chrome finds itself where it has been all year—in uncharted territory.

Having learned hard lessons about the glare of the spotlight accompanying victory in the Kentucky Derby, the humans in charge send the most recognizable horse in the country into its richest race with a Horse of the Year title on the line.

Yet, even at this late date, after a near miss in winning the first Triple Crown since Affirmed in 1978, the situation remains new. With no experience handling a race horse of this magnitude, the owners have reached no consensus about what comes next for California Chrome after the race Saturday at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, California.

On Oct. 24, Debbie Arrington of The Sacramento Bee published a story quoting California Chrome’s co-owner, Perry Martin, as saying, “A good [Breeders’ Cup] Classic and we’ll keep going. [A] clunker and he’s off to the breeding shed.”

Steve Coburn, the other principal owner of the star three-year-old colt, looked at that article with exasperation. When asked about it, he let out a sigh that sounded half derisive, half resigned.

“Retire? I don’t know; we haven’t sat down and discussed everything,” Coburn said Tuesday as he prepared to fly into Santa Anita from Nevada for this weekend’s Breeders’ Cup World Championships. “Every time I call him, he says we’ll talk about it later. We haven’t discussed it.”

USA TODAY Sports

The stakes are substantial. When 2008 Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes winner Big Brown retired to stud in 2008, for example, the deal with Three Chimneys Farm in Kentucky was valued at $50 million.

With two-time Horse of the Year Wise Dan sidelined and out of the Breeders’ Cup because of an injury, California Chrome’s visibility is only enhanced, and he stands out as the marquee horse in the two-day event.

This is despite the colt’s clunker of a comeback race following a three-and-a-half-month rest and a sixth-place finish behind Classic contender Bayern on Sept. 20 in the Pennsylvania Derby.

What Coburn and Martin are going through pretty much amounts to on-the-job training. The partners won the biggest prizes in American racing—along with a clutch of other important stakes—with California Chrome, the first horse they ever bred.

They called their racing stable DAP—Dumb Ass Partners—because someone called them that for believing the dam of California Chrome was worth the $8,000 they paid for her.

Now, this weekend, they and California Chrome reach the climax of an odyssey that led them to the heights of winning the Kentucky Derby to the lows of Coburn being humiliated in the media after comments he made following his colt’s defeat in the Belmont Stakes.

Immediately after Tonalist beat California Chrome by 1 1/2 lengths to spoil his Triple Crown bid, NBC Sports trained its cameras on an emotional Coburn for his reaction, and he railed against the way the game was played. He considered it a sham to lose to a fresh horse that hadn’t even competed in the first two legs of the Triple Crown series.

“This is a coward’s way out,” Coburn said during the broadcast. The media, smelling sour grapes and poor sportsmanship, pounced on him for days afterward. As the roar of disapproval swelled, Coburn wound up on Good Morning America with his wife, Carolyn, to apologize.

Coburn, whose day job is operating a press that makes magnetic stripe cards, such as debit cards, isn’t the type to keep his thoughts in reserve, and he learned the hard way, with no prior experience, what a single utterance in the national spotlight can do. It has made his journey with California Chrome bittersweet.

“It’s like throwing gasoline on a fire and it takes off,” Coburn said. “It’s been a roller coaster for me, man, back and forth and going to work and going back and forth [to different race tracks]. It was one of those deals where everybody reaches a snapping point, and I guess mine was the Belmont. I had done some interviews, and NBC Sports came and took me from work—I must have done 50 hours away from work—and I was so wired at the Belmont Stakes and they stuck a camera right in my face.

“I would never do that again. Yeah, I came away smarter. I would never put a horse through the Triple Crown trail again. It’s just too tough on these young horses, and it’s tough on the people involved. If you’ve never done it before, done what we did this year with this horse, it’s tough.”

Coburn showed up Wednesday night in downtown Arcadia, California, with his wife and a small entourage to watch California Chrome’s trainer, Art Sherman, receive the Mr. Fitz Award presented by the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters Association for typifying the spirit of racing.

USA TODAY Sports

As Coburn developed an uneasy relationship with the media, Sherman basked in his newfound stature following California Chrome’s climb to the top. Long in the shadow of Hall of Famer Jerry Hollendorfer on the Northern California racing circuit, Sherman, at 77, became the oldest trainer ever to win a Kentucky Derby, and his genial personality won him new fans who had never seen him in the spotlight.

It has been the responsibility of Sherman, who hopes California Chrome isn’t retired after the Classic, to get the horse back on track after the defeat in the Pennsylvania Derby, and if recent workouts are any indication, the colt is ready.

While he looked fairly docile in the mornings leading up to the Pennsylvania Derby, California Chrome has regained his vigor as of late. On Oct. 18, at his home track of Los Alamitos, he powered through a six-furlong workout in one minute and 12.2 seconds, galloping out past the wire and far around the backstretch with no interest in pulling up.

The same thing happened Oct. 25, when he went five furlongs in 59.6 seconds, lowering his head at the start and launching into the work.

“You know, I’m just so happy with the way’s been training these last three weeks,” Sherman said. “You see a horse from early this year and now you see him near the end of the year, and I’m just hoping I can keep him around as a four-year-old. You know, I’m not sure what the owners [want to do, with California Chrome now being a valuable stallion prospect] … You’re going to get a lot of offers to sell him, and I’m just hoping that I can race him as a 4-year-old. I think he’d be a great four-year-old.”

While Sherman hopes for a 2015 campaign, to Coburn, the future can wait—the Classic comes first. Yet, the peripheral noise around California Chrome since Martin suggested a possible retirement astounds him.

“People are writing that Jay Z owns the horse,” Coburn said, laughing. “I’m thinking, ‘Who the hell is putting that stuff out there?’ I heard a kid say he’d heard California Chrome is on sale on Craigslist.

“Let’s see what happens after this weekend. He drew a great post [No. 13, on the outside], which is perfect and [jockey] Victor [Espinoza] can control the horse and the pace. He looks very, very good.”

John Scheinman covered racing for eight years at The Washington Post, co-founded and edited Kentucky Confidential and contributes to the Blood-Horse. He lives in Baltimore. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained firsthand.