Unmatched Race

LOUISVILLE, Ky. —  Trainer Bob Baffert says that if Silver Charm runs the way he has looked this week, his horse will win the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

“But if he runs the way I feel, then we’re in trouble,” Baffert said, alluding to how social and professional considerations, along with general pre-race jitters, can overwhelm a trainer in the days before what has become the world’s richest race. Baffert said that the night before Silver Charm’s final Breeders’ Cup workout, he was looking at the clock in his hotel room about every 20 minutes.

If Skip Away, Silver Charm’s nemesis in today’s $5.12-million race at Churchill Downs, runs the way he did in 1996 here, then he’ll finish well behind at the end of the 1 1/4 miles. En route to 18 wins, 10 seconds, six thirds and earnings of $9.6 million in 37 starts, Skip Away ran by far the worst race of his career two years ago when he finished 12th, beaten by 16 3/4 lengths, in the Kentucky Derby.

Skip Away, winner of the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland three weeks before the Derby, was still not yet the commodity he is now; he went off a lukewarm 7-1 at Churchill. Trainer Sonny Hine’s 5-year-old and Silver Charm may be only dollars apart in today’s betting, with Silver Charm the slight morning-line favorite, 8-5 to 9-5.

Since the Derby blip on Skip Away’s performance chart, he has been a blueprint for consistency, winning 15 times, with seven seconds and four thirds, at 10 tracks from Boston to Los Angeles.

Reminded of this extraordinary run, Hine said: “And how many Grade I’s?”

The answer is that since the Derby, Skip Away has run in 19 Grade I races, winning 10. Hine walks around with Grade I’s on the brain, because he has suggested more than once that Silver Charm’s record this year--five wins and one second in seven races--is soft on major races. In fact, Silver Charm has run in only one Grade I this year, winning the $4-million Dubai World Cup in March.

Skip Away--winner of last year’s Classic, the favorite for horse of the year and perhaps the champion even if he loses today--has long atoned for his Kentucky Derby fizzle. By itself, the win over Cigar in the 1996 Jockey Club Gold Cup was enough compensation, but for good measure the gray son of Skip Trial and Ingot Way reeled off nine consecutive wins in 1997-98, a streak that ended a month ago when the unheralded Wagon Limit and Gentlemen outfinished him on a sloppy track in another edition of the Gold Cup. But another defeat at Churchill Downs would send Skip Away off to a breeding career with the unwanted footnote that he could never win at America’s most well-known racetrack.

Asked why Skip Away ran so poorly in the Derby, Hine said: “I’ve never been able to figure it out. The horse had two [fast workouts] between the Blue Grass and the Derby. But a few days out from the Derby, he backed off his feed. We tried to pick him up with vitamins, but maybe this was a sign that he was on the way down.”

Baffert was around Skip Away then. He couldn’t beat him with Semoran in the Blue Grass, then ran second with Cavonnier in the Derby, nosed out by Grindstone.

“I think the Blue Grass wore out Skip Away,” Baffert said. “He had to run real hard that day. When he got to the Derby, he had already run his best race at Keeneland.”

Silver Charm, of course, won the Derby a year later, in 1997, but this year at Churchill Downs, on June 13, Baffert’s gray 4-year-old was a dull second to Awesome Again in the Stephen Foster Handicap. There was a 14-pound swing in the weights, favoring Awesome Again, but more important, Silver Charm never ran as if he was going to win.

“I blame myself for even running him,” Baffert says. “Just a case of bad management. He had made that long trip to Dubai and still wasn’t over it. The horse was stabled at Churchill, the track hiked the purse, and I just got carried away. I was also swept up in that horse-of-the-year stuff at the time.”

After another clinker--a last-place finish at Del Mar--Baffert and Bob Lewis, the co-owner of Silver Charm, talked about the reinventing of Silver Charm.

“We agreed that we just want to have fun with the horse,” Baffert said. “Let the horse-of-the-year stuff take care of itself. If it happens, it happens. But let’s have fun with the horse.”

Since Del Mar, Silver Charm has righted himself, finishing in a dead heat for win with Wild Rush in the Kentucky Cup Classic at Turfway Park and beating old rival Free House in the Goodwood Breeders’ Cup Handicap at Santa Anita.

The barns of Silver Charm and Skip Away are close here. Skip Away passes Silver Charm’s barn when he’s taken to the track for morning exercise. By coincidence Friday, on another cold-to-the-bone day, Baffert led Silver Charm to the track and Skip Away, having just left his barn, was the next horse in the procession.

The two stars have never been this close, since they’ve never been in the same race, and the resemblance was striking. Silver Charm reached a dappled-gray color first and Skip Away has caught up. There are head shots of the two on the current cover of The Blood-Horse magazine, and it’s hard to tell them apart.

“They could be twins,” said Beverly Lewis, wife of Silver Charm’s co-owner.

The day before the race, the people were edgier than the horses. Just before Silver Charm went out for a 1 3/8-mile gallop, Baffert noticed a racket at the end of his barn. A truck with a couple of Churchill Downs employees had pulled up, and the men were rattling around two big drums and two smaller barrels used for trash.

“Couldn’t they be doing this at any other time?” Baffert said. “I guess timing is everything.”

An inveterate moviegoer, Baffert used something from “The Truman Show” to parry the much-asked question about today’s outcome.

“Remember the girl in that movie?” Baffert said. “The one wearing the badge that said, ‘How Will It End?’ Well, that’s what I want to know.”

Breeders’ Cup Notes

In the three previous Breeders’ Cups at Churchill Downs, the crowds ranged from about 66,000 to a Cup-record 71,671 in 1994. Today’s crowd might break that mark. . . . The forecast is for partly cloudy, dry weather and a high of 52 degrees. . . . Next year’s Breeders’ Cup will be run at Gulfstream Park in Florida. The Oak Tree Racing Assn. at Santa Anita is making a concerted pitch for the event in 2000. . . . Jockeys Jerry Bailey, Gary Stevens, Pat Day and Kent Desormeaux have mounts in all seven Breeders’ Cup races. Day has won a record nine Breeders’ Cup races. . . . Trainer Ron McAnally, who’s running Bonapartiste in the Turf, is high on Swain’s chances in the Classic. “He almost beat Silver Charm in Dubai,” McAnally said, “and what beat him was a very clever ride by Gary Stevens, who carried Swain out just enough to make the difference at the wire.”