ESPN Horse Fate brings 'Red,' 'Pharoah' together again

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. -- The racetrack tale of American Pharoah and Texas Red would easily fit in one of the works of William Shakespeare.

How fate took two horses and their connections through a tumultuous, twisting, roller-coaster ride of emotions in the past year is almost impossible to believe.

The two horses have met once before on a racetrack. That happened on Sept. 27, 2014, when American Pharoah won Santa Anita's Grade 1 FrontRunner Stakes by 3¼ lengths to cement his role as a heavy favorite for the Breeders' Cup Juvenile. Finishing third that day was a promising fellow 2-year-old named Texas Red, who closed from seventh to finish third for trainer and co-owner Keith Desormeaux.

Then fate intervened -- for the first of many times.

A foot injury detected less than a week before the Breeders' Cup kept the Bob Baffert-trained American Pharoah out of the Grade 1 test and opened the door for Texas Red to burst onto the scene in a highly impressive manner. Eleventh in the early going under jockey Kent Desormeaux, Keith's younger brother, Texas Red exploded in the stretch to capture the mile-and-a-sixteenth BC Juvenile by 6.5 widening lengths.

At year's end, American Pharoah was honored as the year's champion 2-year-old by a mere 15 votes, yet Texas Red's Breeders' Cup victory painted him in some eyes as a better Triple Crown hopeful than the Zayat Stables star.

When the calendar turned to 2015, exactly three months after his Breeders' Cup win, Texas Red debuted as a 3-year-old and finished a fast-closing second in the San Vicente on Feb. 1.

Then, entering stage left, fate made another grand appearance.

A foot abscess that led to a quarter crack kept Texas Red sidelined until July 4 when he finished second in the Grade 3 Dwyer at Belmont Park.

Meanwhile, during those fateful five months, American Pharoah put together a body of work filled with the stuff dreams are made of. He became one of the sport's immortals and the darling of a nation when he completed the first Triple Crown sweep in 37 years.

Earlier this month, Texas Red's comeback continued on a positive note with a hard-fought half-length victory in the Jim Dandy at Saratoga. Yet a day later, his performance was eclipsed when American Pharoah registered a far more dazzling victory in the Haskell in front of a record crowd at Monmouth Park and a national television viewing audience.

On Saturday, fate will finally bring American Pharoah and Texas Red together for a showdown in the $1.6 million Travers that will make up for so much lost time and perhaps answer at least some of the "what if's" over what might have happened this spring if Texas Red had stayed healthy.

"Two of the best 2-year-olds end up in the one of the most historical Travers ever, so if that's because of fate, so be it," Keith Desormeaux said. "It's interesting, though, the journeys we took to get here. I hope it means Texas Red has caught up with American Pharoah but it's hard to take that angle because American Pharoah has been so dominant. I'm not saying we're going to beat him in the Travers, but we're going to have a helluva time trying."

The Travers promises to be an intriguing reunion for the two horses. Though they were separated by a little less than five lengths on a September afternoon in 2014, they now reside miles apart in completely different circles. For the regal American Pharoah, there is the rarefied air of being the most recent of just 12 Triple Crown winners, while Texas Red is out to prove he is not just another in a long line of Breeders' Cup Juvenile winners who failed to make their presence felt in the famed Triple Crown.

To fully understand how life has changed for the two horses since their previous meeting, a simple visit to Saratoga's backstretch on Thursday afternoon sufficed.

While a large crowd of people stood behind the security barricades around American Pharoah's barn hoping to catch a glimpse of the beloved Triple Crown champion, some 50 yards away Texas Red quietly stood in his stall. There were no fans or cameras, just a solitary security guard, sent by the state as part of the protocol for million-dollar races to monitor the activity around competitors' barns.

There wasn't a flurry of activity for him to note, just Keith Desormeaux rolling up his sleeves and working like a stable hand, cleaning out stalls and filling feed tubs in relative anonymity -- all the while believing he has a horse ready for the gargantuan challenge he faces on Saturday in the mile-and-a-quarter Midsummer Derby.

"This go-around has been uneventful," said Desormeaux, one of the colt's five owners. "We're in good shape. I couldn't ask him to be any better. I think he's going to run his peak race. If that's good enough to beat the big horse, so be it. If not, there's no way we can be disappointed."

The Travers will mark Texas Red's first appearance on a Grade 1 stage since that Breeders' Cup afternoon at Santa Anita, when that ubiquitous dose of fate, with some help from a torrid pace of :45 3/5 for a half-mile, allowed everything to fall in place perfectly for Desormeaux's son of Afleet Alex.

"A lot of Texas Red's brilliance in the Breeders' Cup was the fact that the pace scenario so benefited his running style and Kent's patience," the trainer said. "Five of the most prominent horses in that race took on a suicidal pace, especially for a 2-year-old, and there's Texas Red sitting back there watching them, saying, 'Guys, the finish line is on the other side of the track.' He just sat there and then burst through them like they were stopping. It was like that old cliché. They were stopping and Texas Red was the only one running."

It was a race that also begged a question about what might have happened had American Pharoah stayed healthy and joined the fray through an opening quarter-mile in a withering 22 1/5 seconds and six furlongs in 1:10.

"For me to say we could have beaten Pharoah that day is hard," Desormeaux said. "Texas Red's big effort was set up by a good pace setup rather than sheer brilliance. Yet they might have cooked him in that race. It would have been interesting to find out. If he would have been on the lead that day, he would have gotten beaten. No 2-year-old could sustain that pace for a mile and a sixteenth. It's impossible. That's all hypothetical, though."

Reality will be ushered in Saturday in a race before a sold-out crowd of 50,000 that will feature American Pharoah's bid to become the first Triple Crown champion to win the Travers since Whirlaway in the United States' pre-World War II months of 1941.

As for Teas Red, he's cast merely as one of the main spoilers, along with the likes of Frosted, Keen Ice and Upstart. With better luck, perhaps the scenario would be different, but for Keith Desormeaux, there's nary a regret about the journey he has taken with Texas Red.

"I did not lose an ounce of sleep," he said about Texas Red missing out on the Triple Crown races. "There's a little disappointment, of course, but you have to put things into perspective. We have a $17,000 yearling who at that point had $1.2 million in earnings, and we were so far ahead of anyone's expectations. When that happens, it's hard to be disappointed and we weren't.

"I'm just an old country boy from Louisiana who made it all the way here and I got a legitimate shot to win the Travers. And if we do beat American Pharoah, since there's not a Triple Crown on the line, you will not hear any apologies from me. This is just a great experience and a good opportunity for us."

Not even a fickle fellow like fate could argue with that.