Sometimes, the Favorite Isn’t the Best

Houston was supposed to be a wonder horse. A combination of Man o’ War, Pegasus, Black Beauty, Trigger, the Pony Express and a unicorn. He could do everything but arithmetic.

He was supposed to win Saturday’s Santa Anita Derby by an eighth of a mile. He had Lafitt Pincay on him, he was trained by Wayne Lukas and he cost $2.9 million.

Now, if I paid $2.9 million for a horse, I’d at least want him to talk. Or rescue a cowboy from a burning building, untie damsels from a railroad track, or go tug on the hero and drag him to save a schoolmarm from a fate worse than death.

It was a foregone conclusion he would win the Triple Crown.

He scared everybody out of the Santa Anita Derby. Owners and trainers ducked the race in droves when Houston passed the entry box.

The betting public was awed. Here was a horse that had run only three races in his life, had never run a mile, had never beaten much of anything--and they stormed the windows to get down on him--to bet $277,336 on him to win alone, and knock him down to 9-10.

He only beat one horse, a 46-1 sprinter who packed it in after six of the nine furlongs.

If there was a wonder horse in the Santa Anita field Saturday, it was the horse trained by the canny old conditioner, Charlie Whittingham.

No one expects Sunday Silence to save the fort, untie the star, carry the mail or leave a note for the sheriff.

But he did what Santa Anita Derby winners have to do to have a chance in Kentucky next month--beat his field by so much daylight it looked like two different races.

That’s what Winning Colors did last year. That’s what Affirmed did, in his year, and Lucky Debonair, Majestic Prince and most winners of the Santa Anita Derby who went on to double in Kentucky.

There are exceptions. Gato Del Sol finished fourth at Santa Anita the year he was first in Kentucky; Ferdinand finished third.

But usually, you have to beat inferiors by a lot to have a chance when the big boys show up at Louisville.

When you pay almost $3 million for an athlete, you want him to put you in the World Series, the Super Bowl, hit .400 or beat the Celtics. If he’s a horse, the least he should do is win a prep race for the Kentucky Derby.

Houston didn’t. He was beaten by a horse who not only didn’t cost nearly $3 million, he didn’t even cost quite $18,000.

In fact, his owner, Arthur Hancock III, kept trying to get rid of him. He did everything but leave him on a doorstep with a note on him. He kept vanning him to auctions, hoping somebody would buy him, hoping they wouldn’t notice he was knock-kneed, kind of fiddle-headed and apt to wobble when he walked, like a teen-ager at a prom in her first pair of high heels.

Horse people were too smart for that. They passed on Sunday Silence. They figured if they needed something to pull a plow, they could get one a whole lot cheaper than the $50,000 minimum Hancock wanted for the horse.

There are a lot of David Harums in the horse business, but Arthur Hancock wasn’t one of them in this instance. He was offering a colt who was by the sire Halo, who already had fathered a Kentucky Derby winner.

It isn’t as if Sunday Silence were a runty little derelict with a cropped tail who looked like a large mouse or something you’d find starving on the range in the snow. He’s a big, strapping, black 3-year-old, over 16 hands high, 1,100 pounds of glowing coat. If he was human, he’d be a fullback.

He won his race Saturday by 11 widening lengths. That’s the horse race equivalent of a one-round knockout. The time, 1:47 3/5 was impressive for a horse winning by 11 lengths. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

No one knows what happened to Houston, beaten by 16 3/4 lengths, but sobering news came to the whole field just before the start of the race. In New York, the East’s big hope for Kentucky, Easy Goer, indicated he may not only be the horse everyone thought Houston was, but better. He not only won his race by 13 lengths, he came within a fifth of a second of the world record (held by Dr. Fager) in doing it.

Can a horse whose owners kept putting him in a window and saying, in effect, “Owner Desperate--Make Offer” keep up in Kentucky with a world record challenger?

Horsemen don’t like confrontations. More to their liking is for each to go looking for something they can whip, like a pugilist fighting his chauffeur in tank towns.

But, maybe they owe it to Sunday Silence to give him his shot at immortality. After having shopped him around like a fake diamond by a guy in a checked suit on a street corner, it might be time they showed a little faith in their colt. After all, he’s already licked one wonder horse.

On the other hand, maybe Easy Goer really can talk. Or, maybe, he’s a vaudeville horse, two guys on wheels in a horse suit.

If not, they might have the first match race in Kentucky Derby history. Anyone who would pay $20,000 to challenge these two would probably look up Mike Tyson at 4 o’clock in the morning and ask him what he hears from Robin.