Gelded age

Funny Cide's compelling story could resurrect racing

My favorite athlete of the moment has strength, power and grace, not to mention a killer instinct that kicks in when the stakes are highest. Having ascended from a modest upbringing and survived the slings of scandal-seeking doubters, he has a populist appeal and the makings of a crossover superstar.

The only thing he lacks is a certain pair of anatomical niceties, though that deficiency, some might argue, hasn't kept Scottie Pippen, Tim Couch or Vijay Singh from enjoying reasonably proficient athletic careers.

So what if Funny Cide was dispossessed of his family jewels? The glorious gelding owns the first two jewels of the Triple Crown, and that's all that matters right now. Aside from Annika Sorenstam's inspirationally steady play at the Colonial, what else in sports is making your juices flow?

For me, it's all about the Belmont Stakes on June 7, when Funny Cide will try to become thoroughbred racing's first Triple Crown winner in 25 years. As awesome as that would be -- especially given that the New York-bred horse could accomplish the feat on his home turf -- it wouldn't be the end of this compelling story.

Unlike virtually all of the standout horses of the past two decades, Funny Cide could launch a victory tour that could last, say, five or six years.

For once, a stud on the racetrack won't have his career curtailed by the economics of breeding. Whereas the owners of most young champions cash out before their colts or fillies' 3-year-old seasons are complete, rather than risking serious injury and paying exorbitant insurance premiums, Jackson Knowlton and his high school pals from Sackets Harbor, N.Y., have no reason not to let Funny Cide run himself into retirement. Consider that John Henry, the racing world's last great gelding, quit as a 9-year-old in 1984 with 39 wins, seven Eclipse Awards and career earnings of $6,597,947.

Funny Cide, if all goes well, could do so much more -- namely, carry his sport into the 21st century, traverse the nation to tangle with would-be rivals, become an American icon.

Don't laugh: It happened with Seabiscuit, that improbable darling of '30s America, who will be further immortalized this summer via the movie version of Laura Hillenbrand's best-selling book. If Funny Cide pulls off the Triple Crown -- and his explosive stretch run in the Preakness, which he won by a near-record 9 3/4-length margin, suggests he can -- you may be telling your grandkids about him the way older generations talk up Citation or Secretariat.

For perspective, I called up my friend Michael Ciminella, a Louisville resident who loves thoroughbred racing as much as any human on earth. Ciminella, who has produced TV programming for Churchill Downs, Keeneland and other top racetracks, believes Funny Cide, the fifth horse in the last seven years to have won the Derby and Preakness, could be The One.

"All the elements are there for this horse to become the people's champion," Ciminella says. "He's just a horse with moderate breeding and moderate talent, but he could be at the right place at the right time, and he could well be embraced by common folks. For a lot of reasons, I'd love to see him win it, and if he's a truly great horse, he will."

Unlike most racing afficionados, Ciminella was not crushed by the current chain of Triple Crown near-misses, which have become a predictable rite of late-spring. Silver Charm never saw Touch Gold overtake him in the final strides of the '97 Belmont; Real Quiet lost by a nose to Victory Gallop in '98 when jockey Kent Desormeaux appeared to move too soon; the next year, Charismatic pulled up lame in the final strides; Point Given, the potential superhorse of 2001, ran a shoddy Derby before winning the final two legs of the Crown; and last year War Emblem stumbled at the start of the Belmont and wheezed to an eighth-place finish.

"None of those horses was a great horse," Ciminella says. "If you look at what they did after the Triple Crown, that's further proof. All 11 of the Triple Crown winners were great horses, and they backed it up afterward. None of these horses who've come close in recent years are the caliber of Affirmed, Seattle Slew, Secretariat, or even ('78 runner-up) Alydar. [Contemporary horses] couldn't carry their water buckets."

Back in the glorious '70s, when that quartet of horses and other champions such as Spectacular Bid and John Henry were making the rounds, it was common for tracks to jack up purses for stakes races in order to attract the biggest names in the sport. There was also an element of competitive bravado, triggering head-to-head matchups like the ones between consecutive Triple Crown winners Seattle Slew and Affirmed.

"There were so many really good horses in such a short span of time that everybody, including the owners, said, 'OK, my horse can beat your horse,'" Ciminella says. "A horse like Funny Cide could bring a little of that back and be lured from coast to coast. John Henry was the epitome of the old war horse -- all he liked to do was run. Well, if Funny Cide wins the Belmont and continues to race for years to come, fans and advertisers will have someone they can wrap their dreams around."

If you have a shred of sentimentality, how can you not root for the gelding? He was a Derby afterthought before outrunning the supposedly dominant Empire Marker down the stretch. Then, a week later, The Miami Herald ran a photo that supposedly revealed a foreign object in the right hand of Funny Cide's jockey, Jose Santos. Insiders feared the scandal could doom the sport, but it actually had the opposite effect. Once exonerated, Santos became a sympathetic rider on a horse with something to prove, and the casual fan had more incentive to notice.

Watching Funny Cide draw away down the stretch of the Preakness on TV gave me goosebumps, the same way that Secretariat's unfathomable 31-length Belmont triumph did when I was a second-grader in '73. And you can bet your sweet hindquarters I'll be fired up for this year's Belmont, awash in an anticipation that the Nets, Mighty Ducks and Spanish clay-court specialists simply can't provide.

I look at it this way: If Funny Cide comes through, he has a chance to become the Barry Bonds of his sport -- only with a better personality.

Now, some additional haymakers: