This year’s Triple Crown chase is a parable about  humble roots,  hard work and beating the odds.  At the age of 77, Art Sherman became the oldest trainer to win the May 3rd Kentucky Derby, the world’s most famous race. He didn’t do it the usual way, with a blue blood Kentucky-bred stallion.  Instead, California Chrome came to Sherman from the one-horse racing stable of Steve Coburn and Perry Martin. The California friends named their operation Dumb Ass Partners because that’s what they overheard someone say after they purchased the eventual Derby winner’s dam, Love the Case, for $8,000. The owners then bred the mare to a stallion named Lucky Pulpit for a $2,500 stud fee and that humble union produced a handsome chestnut colt with white trim.

After putting suggested names into a hat, Coburn and Martin let a restaurant waitress pull out the winner: California Chrome. After they chose Sherman as the colt’s trainer, he relocated his operation from Hollywood Park to Los Alamitos, a low-rent quarter-horse track near Long Beach.

In a sport known for upper class breeding, powerhouse racing stables and multi-millionaire trainers and owners, the team behind this year’s Triple Crown contender is proud of its working class roots and readily proclaims California Chrome “a horse for the people.”  Martin tells how his father, Charlie Martin, a hard-working blue collar guy from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, taught him and his brother to go out there and earn it if you wanted something.  After college, Perry Martin went to California and started working at a laboratory.  Using his father’s formula, he kept working long hours and now he owns the lab, which tests polymers, metals and other materials. Coburn runs a small company that makes magnetic strips for things like credit cards and hotel keys.

Trainer Sherman’s stunning victory at Churchill Downs came after 60 years of hard work in the Sport of Kings, starting as a jockey.  Now the team, including jockey Victor Espinoza, have their sights set on the Preakness on May 17^th in Baltimore, Maryland. California Chrome is the 3-2 favorite. The odds are in the California horse’s favor to win again – but if he does, the ultimate challenge still comes at the Belmont Stakes, which has eluded Triple Crown seekers since Affirmed won in 1978.  If California Chrome wins the Preakness on Saturday, there will be a lot of hard-working dreamers out there cheering him on to become only the 12^th Triple Crown winner since Sir Barton won all three races in 1919.  The Belmont Stakes will take place on  June 7th in New York.  For more information on this improbable team, read Detroit Free Press columnist Jeff Seidel’s touching portrait at http://www.freep.com/article/20140515/COL38/305150035/california-chrome-triple-crown-horse-racing-upper-peninsula