But No Dent in His Pluck

Let us pause for a mile and a half Saturday to celebrate a special creature with equine equanimity, Smarty Jones, a new favorite. This plucky 3-year-old is undefeated after seven races and couldn’t care less about the fame now rapidly congealing around him.

Saturday afternoon he runs in the Preakness Stakes, the second stage in the Triple Crown, with his no-smile, no-name veteran Canadian jockey (Stewart Elliott), a Derby rookie, and his aging owners, also Derby rookies, Patricia and Roy Chapman. Roy sells Fords in Pennsylvania but drives a wheelchair. The owner almost gave up raising racehorses and hoping for wins on a farm called Someday. He can’t really cheer much for Smarty Jones because of his emphysema and ubiquitous oxygen bottle.

His horse almost needed one too. In July, not-so Smarty Jones got a little excited learning about starting gates for his first race. He violently reared up, smashed his head on the gate and knocked himself out. They thought he was dead. Forty-five minutes later, a perky Smarty Jones, tugging his trainer, trotted into the vet’s with a bloody nose, swollen eye and fractured skull. With bandages covering all but one eye, his nose and his ears, he was dubbed Quasimodo by veterinarian Patty Hogan. (He took the treatment, the medicines and confinement, well, in stride.) Then, two weeks later, Smarty Jones was back training.

The horse still has a head dent. Also a lot of money. Having won the Arkansas Derby and Rebel Stakes, Smarty Jones qualified to trot off with a $5-million bonus for winning in Kentucky too, the largest one-race North American winnings ever.

On Saturday at Baltimore’s Pimlico, Smarty Jones goes for his eighth win in eight starts. If he makes the winner’s circle, look for that dent in his head. Proof, no doubt, that plenty can be learned in the school of hard knocks.