Crowning glory: from Argentina to California for a million-dollar Grade 1 victory

Subsanador has been around the block. Foaled in Argentina where he won two juvenile Group 1 races and a third as a three-year-old, he was transferred to America early this year, racing as a five-year-old in the northern hemisphere, even though his birthday was not until September. From south to north — and then from east to west: successful last time in a Grade 3 at Monmouth Park on the New Jersey shore, he popped up here in Santa Anita, within sniffing distance of the briny Pacific Ocean, for the inaugural running of a new million-dollar race.

And what a race it promised to be. The Grade 1 California Crown, televised on NBC, featured an all-star line-up: the Preakness and Met Mile winner National Treasure; Saudi Cup hero, Senor Buscador; Newgate, winner of the fabled ‘Big Cap’ on this track; multiple G1-winning three-year-old Muth – all bidding to bag one of the Win & You’re In spots for the Breeders’ Cup Classic which is run two hours south down the Californian coast in Del Mar in November.

The race was a thriller, run at a furious gallop, with Subsanador – ridden by Mike Smith, something of a racing legend and now well into his sixth decade – saving ground round every turn with a rail-hugging ride. Into the straight and the accomplished National Treasure held the lead. Smith angled the Argentinian import out, just as Newgate, the course specialist, drew alongside deeper on the track. Three abreast for the stretch run, it was the gutsy South American nose of Subsanador that was in front on the line. Just!

‘I was very proud of him,’ said trainer Richard Mandella, while Smith doffed his cap (a blue one: Wathnan’s customary red one went astray in the jockeys’ room) to the trainer: ‘He’s got this horse so confident, he thinks he owns the place.’