Indeed, in the Kentucky Derby this Saturday, Arazi could begin a run into racing history. He could be the first horse since Affirmed in 1978 to win the American Triple Crown, or the first horse in history to win both the Kentucky Derby and the English classic Epsom Derby. He may be the star that reinvigorates America’s moribund racing scene. But Arazi cannot be all these things, and he might even lose.
As racing writers conjure grand allusions, Arazi’s bemused French trainer, Francois Boutin, counsels caution: “He hasn’t won anything yet” in the big races he’s been groomed for. Not that Boutin doubts Arazi, favored at 7-5 odds, will triumph. But no decision has to be made about his future until Saturday, when a victory in Kentucky would make the other magic combinations plausible. Boutin then may assume the unenviable task of acting as referee between Arazi’s two owners if they cannot agree on the horse’s future career.
Allen Paulson, the American chairman and CEO of Gulfstream Aerospace, favors running the horse in the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes to clinch the all-American title. But Sheik Muhammad bin Rashid Maktoum, the Arab prince who has come to dominate the British racing scene in the last 15 years, has never won the Epsom Derby. “We are all working for the good of, the horse,” says Boutin. If the decision is left to him, however, there’s little question he’d bring the horse back to England for the Epsom Derby rather than run him in New York the same week at the Belmont. An unrepentant Europhile, Boutin doesn’t even approve of jockey Steve Cauthen saying Arazi’s smooth acceleration is like “a Cadillac.” “I prefer a Ferrari,” says Boutin. The French trainer frets about the hot weather in the United States. He deplores American training methods that rely on electric walking machines. Arazi is used to a ramble through 540 acres of woods around Chantilly and an hour of well-planned trotting and galloping along shaded tracks.
The French regime has kept the wonderhorse fit, certainly. And it’s been good for his manners. When Arazi arrived in France at the age of 18 months, his favorite trick was to spin his riders off his back. Since then, he’s gone straight. Where other horses board planes under sedation, Arazi flies the Atlantic in a 707 with nothing special to keep him quiet but the company of his grooms and an equine sidekick named Akiko. When Boutin talks about what makes Arazi special, he mentions his savvy (“He never makes the same mistake twice”) and, in every sense, his heart. In the stable, on the track, even surrounded by a mob of fumbling photographers and jostling reporters, he remains uncannily calm. “That’s his strength,” says Boutin. When not running or eating, Arazi likes to sleep up to 20 hours a day: a fitting pastime for a horse that dreams are made of.
