Crazy Or Cocky? Johannesburg Camp Lays Low In Tipperary
By, William F. Reed

"I can learn from the American trainers, but I also can teach them some things."
- Venezuelan Juan Arias, 1971

The most intriguing story of the 128th Kentucky Derby is being played out in Ireland, far from the prying eyes of the snoopy American media. It revolves around Johannesburg, who looked like a potential super horse while winning last year's Breeders Cup Juvenile (GI) at Belmont Park, but since has become the Phantom of the Opera.

Although he has yet to start as a 3-year-old, last year's juvenile champion has plummeted in the various Derby polls despite his 7-for-7 record. It's a matter of "out of sight, out of mind." Yet co-owner Michael Tabor and trainer Aidan O'Brien both insist that he's doing well and will show up at Churchill Downs in plenty of time to get ready for the May 4 Derby.

While such colts as Repent, Harlan's Holiday, Came Home, and Booklet have been dominating the traditional American prep races, the Johannesburg camp shocked the racing world by announcing that the colt would have only one race before the Derby - a mile test over the all-weather Lingfield track in England.

As if breaking the "Juvenile Jinx" weren't daunting enough - no winner of the Breeders Cup Juvenile has come back to win the Derby - Johannesburg will have to carry a lot more than jockey Mick Kinane.

In 127 years, nobody has ever won the Derby off only one prep as a 3-year-old. Only one foreign-based horse, Canonero II in 1971, has ever captured the roses. Four Derby winners were bred out of the country (two from Canada, two in England), but brought to the U.S. before their racing careers began.

With Johannesburg, it was the opposite. He was bred in Kentucky by W.G. Lyster and Jayeff B Stables, sold to Tabor and partner John Magnier for $240,000 at the November, 1999, Keeneland sale, and then shipped to Ireland so he could race in Europe.

And there's more.

The only unbeaten horses to win the Derby are Regret in 1915, Morvich in 1922, Majestic Prince in 1969, and Seattle Slew in 1977. The only Derby winner named after a foreign city is Baden-Baden in 1877. Finally, the most recent trainer-jockey team to win the Derby with each's first starter is trainer Grover G. "Buddy" Delp and jockey Ronnie Franklin with Spectacular Bid in 1979.

Until the 1990s, American horseman coveted the European classics more than Europeans sought the American classics. In 1972, for example, Roberto's win in the Epsom Derby made John Galbreath the first horseman to win that classic and the American classic modeled after it, the Kentucky Derby.

Paul Mellon didn't win the Derby until Sea Hero did it for him in 1993, which was 22 years after he won the Prix de l'Arc de Triompe (Gr. I) with Mill Reef in 1971, the same year that Canonero II shook the American racing establishment to its foundation.

Bred in Kentucky by E.V. Benjamin, Canonero II was bought for a paltry $1,200 at the 1969 Keeneland fall sale by a Venezuelan agent, who took him home and sold him to factory owner Pedro Baptista for $4,500. Baptista turned him over to trainer Juan Arias, a happy-go-lucky young man who enjoyed a party as much as he did winning races.

As a 2-year-old, Canonero II won two races in Venezuela, but went 0-for-2 at Del Mar, where Arias sent him to see how he would do against American competition. Back in Venezuela, he won four of eight starts as a 3-year-old, including one in a mile-and-a-quarter race. Much to the surprise of the Venezuelan racing community, Baptista and Arias decided to ship the colt to Louisville and enter the Kentucky Derby.

His American peers snickered when they learned that Canonero II had been flown to the U.S. on a plane that included chickens and ducks. They shook their heads at Arias' unusual training methods (taking his colt on long gallops the wrong way of the track, having long "conversations" with Canonero II, etc.) and pre-Derby campaign, much as American horseman today are shaking their heads over O'Brien's game plan for Johannesburg.

On Derby Day, Canonero II went off at odds of 9-to-1 only because he was put in the pari-mutuel "field." Had he been a separate entity, he probably would have been 90-to-1. But much to the surprise and amazement of just about everyone at Churchill Downs, Canonero II circled the field in the turn for home, a breathtaking move that catapulted him to a 3 3/4-length victory over Jim French.

In Venezuela and other Latin countries, Canonero II's victory was celebrated as wildly as the Irish crowd in last year's Breeders' Cup celebrated Johannesburg's triumph. Lots of crying, laughing, and flag-waving, in other words. It was said the Canonero II was Venezuela's biggest hero since Simon Bolivar.

But Canonero II's wins in the Derby and Preakness Stakes (GI) didn't exactly touch off a foreign invasion of the American classics. In fact, the next foreign-based horse to have an impact on the Derby was Bold Arrangement, who finished second to Ferdinand in 1986.

Bred in England, Bold Arrangement raced exclusively in England and France until trainer Clive Brittain shipped him over the pond for the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland. Although he finished a fast-closing third, Brittain was so elated that he told jockey Pat Eddery, "He'll win the Derby."

He almost did, coming from 14th in the early going to finish second under jockey Chris McCarron, who had replaced Eddery because the English rider was serving out a suspension.

The foreign-based colt with which Johannesburg is most often compared is Arazi, whose eighth-place finish in the 1992 Derby was the worst ever for an odds-on favorite.

Owned by Allen Paulson and Sheikh Mohammed al Maktoum, the Kentucky-bred Arazi lost his 2-year-old debut in France, but then ripped off six consecutive wins in that country to earn his way to Churchill Downs for the Breeders Cup Juvenile.

In his first race on dirt, Arazi won with such a powerful move that even the press box cynics went nuts over him. After the Breeders Cup, however, he had surgery on both front knees that was characterized as only "precautionary." Then the Arazi team stunned the racing world by announcing that he would come to the Derby off only one prep race - a glorified workout, really - in France.

The Derby crowd, showing that it couldn't shake the memory of Arazi's performance in the Juvenile, sent him off at 90 cents to the dollar. However, after making a bold move in the turn for home, Arazi ran out of gas. He was both unfit and unready to cope with the Derby's special challenges.

Such is the price of hubris.

But Arazi's adventures seemed to whet the appetite of Tabor, Magnier, the Arab oil sheikhs, the Japanese, and other foreign-based owners. In 1995, Thunder Gulch won the Derby for Tabor and trainer D. Wayne Lukas, and in 2000, Fusaichi Pegasus won the roses for Japanese businessman Fusao Sekiguchi.

Unlike the famed Godolphin Stable of Dubai, which has sent four horses into the Derby off only preps overseas, Sekiguchi turned his $4 million Keeneland sales purchase over to Neil Drysdale, who's as close to being a British trainer as an American can be, to campaign in the U.S.

Like the Maktoum family that runs Godolphin, the Johannesburg team seems stubbornly determined to do things their own way. Maybe they're only trying to handle their colt with kid gloves. Or maybe they're so supremely confident in his ability that they believe he can handle the American-based colts without exposing Johannesburg to the rigors of the American prep races.

"It might be too competitive for a prep over there," said O'Brien after Johannesburg had worked five furlongs in :56 in Ireland on Feb. 6. "We plan on giving him a run in early April. He's doing well, and has grown and lengthened. He's very relaxed for such a quick horse."

Maybe O'Brien, like Arias 31 years ago, is ready to show the American trainers that there's more than one way to win the Derby. Then again, maybe we're about to see a re-run of the Arazi story.

Native Kentuckian William F. "Billy" Reed has been a sports writer in various capacities for 42 years and has missed covering the Kentucky Derby a mere two times since 1966. He has been a high-profile sports writer in Kentucky for the Commonwealth's two largest daily newspapers, the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader and was a national columnist for Sports Illustrated, covering among other sports, Thoroughbred horse racing and college basketball. Reed currently pens a column for the Louisville Sports Report, contrbiutes features to the Keeneland program and will be, among varied other assignments, filing Kentucky Derby installments on www.kentuckyderby.com.

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