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Casino Drive connections trash the talk
DUTROW CAN'T BAIT JAPANESE HORSEMEN
Nobutaka Tada was asked whether there is a Japanese expression for trash-talking, and he smiled and said, "What is this -- trash, trash ... trash what?"
Perhaps 150 yards away from where his boss's Japan-based mystery horse, Casino Drive, is stabled at Belmont, Big Brown trainer Rick Dutrow soon would emerge from Barn 2 and laugh happily when asked how he rates Casino Drive's chances of spoiling Big Brown's quest to become the 12th Triple Crown winner in history.
Big Brown has been so dominant against many of the same horses he'll face again in the June 7 Belmont that his looming showdown against the relatively unknown but highly touted Casino Drive already is starting to take on the feel of a match race. Everyone else is supposed to fight to merely stay in the TV frame by the end of the 11/2-mile race.
Casino Drive has been cast as Ali's Frazier, Borg's McEnroe, Russell's Celtics versus Wilt's 76ers. The new colt has run only two career races, both wins, but he turned in the same sort of scintillating performances that announced Big Brown's greatness at Saratoga last September and the Florida Derby this spring.
That explains why Casino Drive is seen as the only threat to stop Big Brown's sprint into immortality. But Dutrow doesn't see it.
"He's got no chance of beating our horse," Dutrow said. "I'll be in the winner's circle when they get to the quarter pole. That's how I feel. I don't see that this horse can beat him.":fff:
For Dutrow, the boast went a step further than the one he took last Saturday after Big Brown's runaway win in the Preakness. Back then, Dutrow was so flush with happiness that he giddily predicted that Casino Drive's Japanese fans who thought Godzilla was dead would find out at the Belmont, "He's not dead. He's here!"
Crowed Dutrow, "We've got a monster!"
"Godzilla?" Tada repeats now with a spark of recognition. He laughs and says, "He really said Godzilla? That's funny, that's very funny.
"It sounds like he likes talk, so let him talk. It's OK. We will see the result.":lll:
Tada is the racing manager for Global Equine Management Ltd., the group that bought Casino Drive in Kentucky and moved him to Tokyo to race. But he is too polite to say anything as bold or as colorful as Dutrow. "It is not the Japanese way," Tada explained.
He and the horse's owner, Hidetoshi Yamamoto, a gaming, slot-machine and entertainment entrepreneur, are confident. They began pointing Casino Drive to the Belmont last summer because, they say, there's magic in his bloodlines.
Casino Drive is out of the same mare as the last two Belmont winners, Jazil and Rags to Riches. He was born and bought in Kentucky but moved to Tokyo to race under leading trainer Kazuo Fujisawa. After numerous delays in getting him to the racetrack because of a knee injury as a 2-year-old, then some influenza outbreaks and quarantine issues, Casino Drive finally picked up his maiden win in his first career start in Kyoto earlier this year, routing the field by nearly 12 lengths.
Because it's not uncommon in Japan for horses to have fan clubs that number in the thousands, Casino Drive's potential was known even before he made his first start.
"It was a very strange thing, and I was not there, but people told me that a long time before the post, people were clapping, giving him a standing ovation," Tada said. "That was a really nice thing. The people knew, if he was good, he's going to America. So it was like an encouragement to run fast."
There has been so much travel for Casino Drive and interruptions in his training that his connections were thrilled when he won the Peter Pan Stakes by 53/4 lengths at Belmont on May 10. The way he shot out of the final turn, splitting two horses, made them feel he has all the necessary traits: speed, stamina, a keen intelligence and self-assuredness in traffic. "So much speed," Tada emphasizes.
Late-coming speed, wire-to-wire speed, what?
"Everything," he shoots back.
Will it be enough? Will Casino Drive's bloodlines prevail in a race he seems born for? Or will Dutrow, who has risen from being homeless and sleeping in a tack barn at Aqueduct before he got his first horse to train there years ago, see his horse of a lifetime refuse to be stopped?
Will it matter that Big Brown's jockey, Kent Desormeaux, is familiar with Casino Drive after guiding him to that Peter Pan win?
Will the intrigue ratchet up even more if Casino Drive's jockey turns out to be Edgar Prado? Dutrow unsuccessfully championed Prado to ride Big Brown earlier this year but criticized him this week for allegedly trying to box in Big Brown in the Preakness aboard last-place finisher Riley Tucker.
Dutrow counters, "Well, I asked Kent how (Casino Drive) matches up with us. He said he doesn't."
"Big Brown is a great horse," Tada says, smiling serenely. "But every starter has a chance."Saturday, June 7
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