Challenge May Await Top Duo : Horse racing: Opening Verse could pose a threat to Sunday Silence and Easy Goer this summer.

Although neither Sunday Silence nor Easy Goer has raced as a 4-year-old -- both are absent from the field for Saturday’s Pimlico Special -- it is widely assumed that they will dominate U.S. racing this year.

However, there may be one racehorse capable of giving them a serious challenge. He doesn’t have much national recognition yet, and he isn’t even listed as the morning-line favorite at Pimlico Saturday, but Opening Verse has the potential to be a champion. He can show how good he is when he faces a top field in Maryland’s first $1 million race.

A year ago his trainer, Dick Lundy, won the Special with Blushing John, whom he later sent into battle against Sunday Silence and Easy Goer in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Blushing John finished only a length behind the top two. So Lundy has a good perspective from which to evaluate Opening Verse.

“A lot of people thought I was crazy for thinking that Blushing John could beat those horses in the Breeders’ Cup,” Lundy said, “but they both had to run their best races to beat him. And I think Opening Verse may be better than Blushing John. He’s more versatile -- he can run on the inside, he can run on the outside, he can make a couple of different moves in a race. If he runs the way I think he will in the Special, we’ll take him to California for the Hollywood Gold Cup, where he’ll face Sunday Silence.”

Lundy is a low-key trainer who doesn’t routinely boast about his horses, but he talked as if the outcome of the Pimlico Special almost was a forgone conclusion. And he is probably right.

Opening Verse never got a chance to show how good he is before he turned 4, because of a major recent trend in the sport: the domination of U.S. yearling sales by European buyers. Many of this country’s best-bred horses are sent to race in England; even though they may have pedigrees that would make them effective dirt runners, they are never exposed to dirt tracks abroad. Blushing John was one such horse: He raced in Europe at 2 and 3, then came to this country and became an Eclipse Award-winner running on the dirt at 4.

Opening Verse was bought for $800,000 as a yearling by Mohammed al Maktoum, and raced creditably during two seasons in England, although he never won a major stakes. Owner Allen Paulson then acquired him as part of a package deal with Maktoum after Lundy had made a trip to Europe to watch the colt run. “He was a good-moving horse who was sound and correct,” the trainer said. “There are a lot of horses in Europe who want to come from 10 or 12 lengths behind and make a late kick, and they don’t necessarily do so well here. But Opening Verse had a lot of natural speed.”

He displayed that speed when he ran the fastest mile of the Santa Anita meeting this winter, winning in a blistering 1:34 1-5. But it was his most recent start, the Oaklawn Handicap at Arkansas, that showed Lundy (and plenty of handicappers, as well) just how good he is. He stalked the early leaders and then accelerated powerfully through a narrow opening to take the lead; jockey Chris McCarron told Lundy that he made contact with the horses on both sides of him, but that Opening Verse was undeterred. He drew away to run 1 1/8 miles in 1:47 1-5. From the speed- handicapping standpoint this was as good as any horse in the country has run this year (and not much slower than the Sunday Silence-Easy Goer Breeders’ Cup Classic).

On the basis of this performance, Opening Verse should be able to beat Ruhlmann, the morning-line favorite for the Pimlico Special. Ruhlmann has won his last two starts in California impressively, but he was able to get relatively easy leads over a racing surface that is traditionally conducive to speed horses. Opening Verse’s major competition may come from two other rivals.

Gorgeous beat the champion mare Bayakoa last month by equaling a track record at Oaklawn. She has not faced males before, but her speed figures suggest that she can handle competition of this quality. DeRoche finished 2 1/4 lengths behind Opening Verse in the Oaklawn Handicap, but his effort was better than it looked on the surface. The inside part of the track was horribly disadvantageous, and the only person at the track who seemed oblivious to the strong bias was DeRoche’s jockey, Sam Maple, who was hugging the rail all the way.

Gorgeous and DeRoche are both formidable contenders in the Special, but they are likely to play only supporting roles in a race in which Opening Verse demonstrates what a high-class horse he is.