Funny doings raise interest
By ROB LONGLEY -- Toronto Sun
BALTIMORE -- A funny thing happened amid the fallout of the latest scandal to rock racing's world.
After surviving 48 hours as the disgraced Kentucky Derby champion, Funny Cide may just head into the second jewel of the Triple Crown as the popular people's horse.
He certainly has drawn considerable attention to the 128th edition of the Preakness Stakes, which is scheduled to be run on Saturday at ancient Pimlico Race Course, if for mostly the wrong reasons.
The victim-turned-vindicated jockey is Jose Santos, a native of Chile whose poor grasp of English created the mess.
It began this past Saturday when the Miami Herald published a picture and a story speculating that Santos carried something other than a whip in his right hand.
For racing's conspiracy theorists, that something is known as a "battery" or "machine." One of racing's dirtiest tricks, the device applies a swift jolt of electricity to a horse in the hope it will shock him into running faster.
The details of the purported drama quickly became farcical. In the Herald report, Santos was quoted as saying he had "a cue ring" to "alert the outrider."
No one in racing had heard of such a thing and when questioned the following day, Santos said he was wearing a "Q-Ray (a brand of medical bracelet) for my arthritis."
(Say both five times fast with a Spanish accent and you quickly learn how the confusion arose.)
When the story broke, trainer Bobby Frankel promptly said he would race Derby runner-up Empire Maker in the Preakness after originally deciding to pass.
Frankel figured that if Funny Cide would be disqualified, he suddenly would have the Derby winner and a shot at the Crown.
After investigating the story and picture a little closer, however, the trainer realized the case against Santos was as flimsy as a $2 win ticket on a three-legged horse and quickly changed course once again.
Following its probe, the Kentucky Racing Commission on Monday ruled photographic sleight of hand had duped the Herald. Of course this was the same commission which gave Herald editors the green light after one steward said the photo looked "very suspicious."
Santos has been guilty of questionable strategic race tactics in his career, but never buzzing a horse. Now he feels obliged to ride the hair off Funny Cide on Saturday.
"I feel like I have to win," Santos said. "I have to show the betting public that we won the Derby fair and square."
Frankel, meanwhile, has his own take on the bizarre events. He says that in a strange way, the fuss will be a boon rather than a black eye to the sport.
'WHY IS IT BAD?'
"I'm convinced it's going to help racing," Frankel said. "Look at Mike Tyson. He bit somebody's ear off and everybody wants to fight him next time. Why is it bad? The gamblers are going to gamble (anyway)."
Here is where Frankel hits the horseshoe on the head.
Horse players are a resilient bunch, living through scandal after scandal. They know that some horses are being juiced with illegal performance enhancers.
They believe some races are fixed and that certain jockeys stiff horses. Last fall, all faith in the game should have crumbled when an insider at a tote company almost bilked the Breeders' Cup of millions by punching out winning Pick 6 tickets when the results were already known.
The thing is, bettors may take a day or two off when they really feel jobbed, but invariably they come back. They may grumble and cry fix a little louder, but they come back.
And they'll come back this Saturday to see the central character in the great Kentucky Derby scam that wasn't.
Even the ones -- and they are out there -- who believe it to be true.
