�arriba! Canonero Does It Again

And now Canonero goes to New York's Belmont Stakes in June, at last recognized as a potent and legitimate contender for the Triple Crown. If he succeeds, he will be the first to do so since Citation in 1948. His people, from Owner Pedro Baptista, Trainer Arias and Jockey Avila down to their growing guest list of Venezuelan friends and diplomats, changed in a few frantic moments last week from objects of buffoonery to respected horsemen. It was a well-deserved transition. Avila, whose mother and his other fans call him The Monster because he wins important "cl�sicos" in Caracas that he is not expected to, is an accomplished reinsman reminiscent of Britain's Lester Piggott; his backside points skyward during the early running of his races. In the Derby, he said, he had hit Canonero only twice. In the Preakness, the winner was hit more frequently, but Avila said the horse finished strong. "Going to the front is not my usual style. I like to come from behind, as we did in Kentucky. But the horse won the race, I didn't. This is a great one."

Arias, unlike Avila, was almost as unknown in his own country before the Derby as was Canonero in the U.S., but even after the Preakness he could not hide his resentment at his North American reception. "They made me feel like I was at the Derby to be a clown," the trainer complained. "They made fun of us at parties. There have been times when I wanted to tell the press to go to the devil, but I contained myself. Now I can do like your Campo and go 'bla, bla, bla!' Here in the United States the trainers think they know everything and that we trainers from other parts are supposed to be here to learn. I have shown these people a few things about training. In the U.S., for instance, everyone trains by the stopwatch. Speed is the big thing. They train so much for speed that the horses get out there and crash into each other. But the stopwatch is a relative thing. In Venezuela I take every horse individually and train it according to its needs and to the requirements of the race."

The requirements of the race at Pimlico last week were demanding and were splendidly met, and Arias, who only once has been in the top 10 trainers in his own country, will go home now to be met by his fellow trainers, who, by tradition, will cut off his tie and parade him through the streets of Caracas. Avila, who got 12 hours of sleep before the Preakness and predicted victory all along after noticing that Canonero was calmer than he ever had been in Caracas, said, after 17 years as a jockey and winning both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, "I have nothing more. Everything else now is anticlimactic. My only challenge is to maintain what I have accomplished."

The next challenge for Canonero II, Avila and Arias is the mile and a half at Belmont Park on the afternoon of June 5. Bring your Venezuelan flag. It may be the In thing at Belmont this year.