Eyeballing victory on the road to Kentucky

AMERICA AT LARGE / George Kimball: The presence of two one-eyed horses (and one one-eyed owner) in Saturday's Kentucky Derby has proved irresistible to the turf writers who have flocked to Churchill Downs' backstretch this week. You'd think it had never happened before, but it has.

In 1982 owner Tom Gentry ran a one-eyed horse named Cassaleria in the Derby. I was introduced to Gentry by my fellow Kentucky Colonel Billy Reed, who assumed, correctly, that the maverick owner of a one-eyed horse would find a kindred spirit in a maverick, one-eyed sportswriter.

Gentry spent the days before the Derby commuting between his farm in Lexington and Louisville by helicopter, and each trip brought a new shipment of goodies, including Cassaleria t-shirts and large, blue-on-yellow buttons with the slogan "Thine Eye Has Seen The Glory," which he would toss to the milling crowds. The locals grew to so anticipate these deliveries that by late in the week when Gentry's 'copter swooped down it looked like the last days of Saigon in the Churchill Downs parking lot.

On the eve of the Kentucky Derby, Gentry invited me to a Cassaleria party in the owners' car-park. He had hired for the occasion what had to be the largest Winnebago in captivity, well-stocked with catered hors d'ouvre and with a bar at each end. When I arrived shortly after the running of Friday's Kentucky Oaks, it had everything but fellow guests.

An elegant looking black woman, whom I took to be the caterer, stood admiring the food, while on a leather seat near the bar lounged a 30-ish black man dressed in tuxedo trousers and a white shirt. Assuming he was the bartender, I ordered a drink, and when he didn't move fast enough for my liking, repeated the request.

He eyed my strangely, but eventually uncoiled himself from his comfortable position, and handed me a beer.

Only when Gentry showed up and I was introduced did I come to realise that I was actually the third guest to have arrived. The first had been Marilyn McCoo and her husband, Billy Davis Jr, or two-fifths of the Fifth Dimension. It was Davis who had fetched my beer.

Cassaleria, alas, did not fare well the following afternoon, and finished 13th, a furlong or two behind winner Gato Del Sol.

Essentially forgotten for 22 years, Cassaleria name has been invoked a lot this week. Pollard's Vision, a three-year-old, who lost an eye to a mysterious equine malady called "Mare Reproductive Loss Syndrome", which swept Kentucky bloodstock farms a few years ago, has a chance to win Saturday's Run for the Roses, as does Imperialism, trained by 21-year-old Kristin Mulhall. (Were Imperialism to wind up in the Winner's Circle, Mulhall would not only be the first woman but the youngest trainer ever to saddle a Derby winner.) Imperialism's defect is congenital: he was born with his right eye sunken in its socket, likely the result of one of his hooves being pressed against it in the womb. He can't see a horse coming from behind on that side until it draws even with him.

That Pollard's Vision was visually challenged had become apparent by last July's Keeneland Yearling Sale at which he was purchased, for $70,000, by David Moore, a one-eyed retired banker, and was named, by Moore's daughter Charlotte, for Red Pollard, the one-eyed jockey who rode the legendary Seabiscuit.

According to two-eyed trainer Todd Pelcher, in the absence of the defect the colt might have brought as much as $400,000.

Pollard's Vision made his debut last summer at Belmont Park, finished 22 and a half lengths off the pace, and promptly tossed his rider, John Velasquez, as he crossed the finish line. He bounced back, though, beating the field with a 12 and-a-half-length victory at Saratoga in August, and more recently won the Illinois Derby.

When she purchased Imperialism for owner Steve Taub three months ago, the Kentucky Derby was the last thing on her mind.

Mulhall says she wasn't aware of Imperialism's handicap until he stumbled off the plane in California, where she keeps her stable. The young trainer (who exercises her own horses) attempted to ride him that day, but the horse spooked and nearly tossed her over the rail. She immediately fitted him with a hood fitted with a blinker on his right side.

Once she got the colt on the track, Imperialism surprised everyone. He won his first two races for Mulhall at Santa Anita - the Grade II San Vicente Stakes, followed by the San Rafael Stakes. He then finished third in the Santa Anita Derby, but was moved up to second after a foul claim (against Rock Hard Ten) was allowed.

Although they are just the second and third one-eyed horses to make it to the starting gate in Louisville on the first Saturday in May, Pollard's Vision and Imperialism aren't unique to the Sport of Kings. Horse-players still recall a horse named One-Eyed King, a successful stakes horse in the 1950s, and a gelding named One-Eyed Tom nearly got to Churchill Downs a decade before Cassaleria did. (One-Eyed Tom failed a starter's test when he broke out of the gate and ran in the opposite direction, and was not allowed to run in the 1972 Derby.) Old-time railbirds also rattle off the names of Mystic Eye, Funny Fellow, and Real Connection, all of whom raced with success despite having one eye.

If being blind in one eye doesn't seem to be a terrible impediment (to sportswriters or to thoroughbreds), though, consider the case of a horse named Burk's Charge. Lexington Herald-Leader turf writer Maryjean Wall recalled this week that after Burk's Charge crashed into the inside rail at Pimlico back in 1995, he was discovered to have been blind in both eyes, a particularly curious development since the mishap occurred in the ninth race of his career.