Triple Crown Hopefull I'll Have Another gallops with exercise rider Jonny Garcia up during a morning workout at Belmont Park. ELMONT, N.Y. — So here is this racehorse named I’ll Have Another who was sold for a lousy 35 grand because nobody wanted him and suddenly he is threatening to morph into Pegasus. This is the same colt that lost by 19 lengths in the slop at Saratoga last September. After that he was looked at as a liability in search of a jockey.
And here came this jockey out of Vera Cruz, Mexico, who gets to ride the colt because nobody has faith in either one of them but then the trainer tells the owner, “Why not? He’s a nice kid. Nobody else wants to ride him. Let’s give him shot.”
What follows is hard to believe. They were made for each other or as Merlin used to say while showing King Arthur around the old grotto: “Hokus, Pokus, this ain’t no joke-ess.”
He won at 43-1 the first time they got together. Then he won the Santa Anita Derby, the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness. Together, they have never lost. And suddenly, history could be just a little more than 24 hours and a mile and a half away.
Was it really that simple?
Not exactly.
What if Terry Jordan had said “a condo in Mexico? You must be crazy. I’m not gonna be a candidate for Montezuma’s revenge.” What if he bought at Lake Tahoe or the Catskills or Scottsdale? And by the way, exactly who the hell is Terry Jordan?
It developed that Terry Jordan is the matchmaker who made the first move that opened the door to “Triple Crown madness 2012” for this colt and rider.
At the time Jordan, trained horses and trained them very well at a bush track in British Columbia called Hastings Park. And he did, indeed, buy a condo for winter vacations in Acapulco. Five years before I’ll Have Another was even a gleam in his sire’s eye, Jordan was soaking up the sun on the deck of his condo and all he could think was “just another lousy beautiful day. I need some action.”
He hopped in his car and drove three and a half hours to Mexico City and an equine pleasure palace called El Hipodromo.
“I had a friend named Wayne Snow who was a jockey’s agent up at Hastings Park and he asked me to be on the lookout for a Mexican jockey he might be able to represent,” Jordan said. “There was that and my own stable was running low on hotwalkers and grooms.”
On his busman’s holiday, Jordan paused to watch some morning workouts and noticed the way this kid was handling his mounts. Then he saw him ride in a couple of races that afternoon. He struck up a conversation with the kid’s agent.
“As I recall his name was Rafael and he told me I ought to take this kid named Mario Gutierrez back with me. I had doubts because he was young and had only won one or two races, but Rafael said he could ride and he was sure if I didn’t take him someone else would. We got his papers that day at the Canadian embassy.
“Up in Hastings I put him on everything I had because I also get his 5-pound allowance as an apprentice and he did nothing but good. He was the top rider for three years and he won so much for me that I moved on over to Woodbine (the country’s biggest track) in Toronto. But he stayed and he was riding for an owner named Glen Todd, who took him into his house and was like a father to him. Finally he winds up at Santa Anita and he’s knocking on stable doors for work, and Paul Reddam sees him ride and talks to his trainer and they decide to give him a shot in the morning working horses for them.”
In 1964, there was a great Canadian-bred and owned colt named Northern Dancer who won the Derby and won the Preakness (the first Canadian horse to win either one) but ran third in the Belmont. It was, in its way, a major blow at the collective psyche of the nation.
Now consider this: Terry Jordan, a Canadian finds Gutierrez. Glen Todd, another Canadian, gives him Vancouver’s best horses to ride. And J. Paul Reddam, a third Canadian puts him up on I’ll Have Another, the horse that could win the Triple Crown tomorrow.
In short this Mexican-born jockey was minted in Canada by Canadians. Forty eight years later, are we about to see Northern Dancer’s Revenge?
Perhaps there is no connection, but if you ask Terry Jordan whether he was at the Derby when Gutierrez won, he says:
“No. I preferred to watch it at home alone. I knew how good he was. I wanted to be alone because I knew I would be very emotional.”
If Gutierrez gets it done tomorrow, forget the Belmont’s traditional blanket of carnations. The Maple Leaf ought to be the blossom of the day.
Since Sir Barton won the first one in 1919 only 11 colts have ever won the Triple Crown. Star-Ledger columnist emeritus Jerry Izenberg covered the entire Triple Crown journeys of the most recent three, Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed.
Jerry Izenberg: jizenberg@starledger.com