Desormeaux Has a New Best Friend

Tucked beneath a black-and-white blanket, Bill Shoemaker boarded the elevator in his wheelchair, having seen one hell of a horse race won by one hell of a horse.

“No contest,” he said.

What Shoe had viewed was a 5 1/2-length bust-out by Best Pal in Saturday’s $1-million Santa Anita Handicap, the longest margin of victory in this 55-year-old race since Spectacular Bid’s 1980 runaway under Shoemaker at track-record speed.

And Best Pal did it with a cracked hoof.

Who shoed him--Michael Jordan?

“This horse is just unbelievable,” said Gary Jones, the actual trainer who emotionally was two feet above the rim over winning. “This is the thrill of a lifetime. It’s like winning the NCAA playoffs, the Super Bowl, all that stuff.”

“The horse never took a bad step,” said Jones’ second-best pal, jockey Kent Desormeaux, who was equally pumped. “What is it Jones always says? ‘It don’t get no better than this.’ ”

It don’t.

This is one fast ’88 mustang.

Hard to believe, even now, that as a 3-year-old Best Pal could have been outrun in the Kentucky Derby by a nag called Strike The Gold that since then hasn’t struck much of anything but dirt.

For the roses, Best Pal ran second. For 1992, he has run second to nobody.

The gelding has beaten all comers in three consecutive top-dollar stakes at Santa Anita and is now North America’s richest active money-maker, having won nearly $3.1 million.

And that’s pretty much what you could call him today.

America’s Animal.

They threw some fast company at him Saturday over a mile and a quarter, but Best Pal left them looking slow as wooden ponies on a carousel. Twilight Agenda, In Excess, Ibero--no stiffs in this bunch.

But the Pal, well. . . .

“He practically took their heads off,” Desormeaux said.

He did it in 1:59 flat.

That’s John Henry fast.

That’s almost Affirmed fast.

That’s not quite Spectacular Bid fast.

But spectacular, it was.

Five-and-a-half lengths in front--on a bad tootsie.

“I used to ride Twilight Agenda, and I can’t believe how easy Best Pal went by him,” Desormeaux said. “And that was probably the second-best horse I ever rode.”

The first-best?

“Hey, Best Pal, he is my best pal,” Desormeaux said.

However thrilled Shoemaker must have been at winning the Big ‘Cap for the first time--in 1954, on Rejected--the feeling couldn’t have been a whole lot greater than Desormeaux felt after this one.

The kid, 22, has never won a bigger race. The Shoe, long retired, won 11 Santa Anita Handicaps, or one-fifth of them.

This could be the start of something big.

One irony here is that Desormeaux’s mounting success might help him find a mount for this May’s Kentucky Derby. He sure hopes so. The Derby favorite, Arazi, will be ridden by Pat Valenzuela, who used to be Best Pal’s jockey before signing an exclusive contract to work for Arazi’s owner.

“Maybe, thanks to this, somebody out there will think of Desormeaux,” Desormeaux said.

Too bad Best Pal can’t go to Louisville with him.

But you know the Kentucky Derby.

Age discrimination.

Gary Jones--like Best Pal, a California-bred--doesn’t much care if he ever wins the Kentucky Derby now. Jones swore that winning the Santa Anita Handicap meant more to him than any Triple Crown jewel.

To him, no ‘Cap is bigger. This one’s the one. The Large Lid. The Spacious Sombrero. You can have those runs for roses or black-eyed susans. Jones wants a haberdasher, not a florist.

“The Big ‘Cap is something my family has been trying to win forever,” Jones said.

That’s why the handler of Best Pal wanted to express his gratitude to everybody involved with the horse, from head to toe.

Desormeaux might have been on top, but working underneath was Buzz Fermin, the blacksmith. Buzz, too, has been with Jones “forever.” Buzz is easy to spot around the barns. He’s a California kind of smithy. He comes to work wearing shorts.

When Best Pal’s hoof was cracked, six days before the race, during a workout at Hollywood Park, it endangered the horse’s chances of becoming the first Cal-bred in 15 years to win California’s biggest annual race.

Jones had no idea what to expect from Best Pal until he ran. And whoa, did he run.

“Obviously, my blacksmith did a superior job,” Jones said.

As did the jockey.

As did the trainer.

But it sure does help to have that much horse.