Snow Chief Convinces a Small Band of Doubters That He Is Genuine Item

So convincing was Snow Chief’s victory in Sunday’s $500,000 Santa Anita Derby that even the usually boisterous crowd in the jockeys’ room was subdued.

“Who got second and third?” apprentice Corey Black asked reporters entering the room.

“What’s the matter, Corey, didn’t you watch the race?”

“Yea, but there was only one horse to watch.”

Indeed. The six-length win by the 3-year-old son of Reflected Glory and Miss Snowflake didn’t leave much room for argument. None at all, in fact.

“He’s a tough little horse,” said Bill Shoemaker, who finished third aboard Ferdinand. “He doesn’t know how bad bred he is.”

Whatever doubts exist about his lineage, Snow Chief is erasing them with each victory. Sunday’s was his fifth in a row and seventh in his last eight races. No one, it seems, can catch him.

Eddie Delahoussaye, who won the race in 1984 aboard Mighty Adversary and who finished third last year on Nostalgia’s Star, gave it the best effort, bringing Icy Groom home second, but even he didn’t think he could win.

“That son of a gun can run,” Delahoussaye said. “You can’t take nothin’ away from him. I wasn’t gonna to catch him. He’s won what, close to $2 million, now?”

Actually, Snow Chief’s victory brought his career earnings to more than $1.7 million, a far cry from Icy Groom, who was making only his sixth start, having won the Bradbury Stakes last time out.

“He was running with a different kind of horse today,” Delahoussaye said. “He ran a hell of a race. We’re probably gonna go to the Blue Grass; that’s what the plans were.”

And if Icy Groom does well at Keeneland, is the Kentucky Derby the next stop?

“Why not go to the Derby?” Delahoussaye said. “What is there? Just him, Snow Chief, and he might get beat that day. I’ve seen a lot of them get beat that day.

“If he runs good in the Blue Grass, I’m sure Eddie (Gregson, Icy Groom’s trainer) will probably run him in the Derby.”

The Gregson-Delahoussaye partnership won at Churchill Downs in 1982 with Gato Del Sol. Before that race, Gregson tried to figure what it would take to win the Derby with a California-raced horse.

“I did a computer study of every horse that had finished fourth or better in the Kentucky Derby and that came from California, the course that they took, the races that they picked, hoping to get a clue how to do it myself,” Gregson said at Friday’s Santa Anita Derby draw.

“I found that the pattern made no sense at all. Everybody did it every possible different way. So much for computer studies on how to win the Kentucky Derby. I think you just have to have the best horse and have him at his best at the time.”

Right now, the best horse is clearly Snow Chief, but Gregson cannot be too displeased with Icy Groom’s performance. On Friday, the trainer said he might be satisfied with a fourth-place finish.

“Gato in ’82 finished fourth and of course went on and won the Derby, so if I knew that that was going to happen I’d settle for fourth,” he said. “But I’m hoping for an awful lot better.”

He got it, but it was still not enough to even seriously challenge the winner.

“That son of a gun just took off,” Delahoussaye said of Snow Chief’s burst to the front along the backstretch. “But when they’re going that slow, he’s supposed to take off. My horse, you can’t send him. If you send him, you’re not going to have anything left. Like Shoe (Shoemaker) said the other night, you’ve gotta ride it the way it comes up.”

The way it came up for Alex Solis, making his Santa Anita Derby debut, was perfect. All he had to do was get aboard Snow Chief and the race was his.

“He took me to the front,” Solis said. “I was behind the other horses, but when the other horses move to the outside he see a lot of room there and he just take off.

“He was pulling, he wanted to go. He feel very, very strong.”