Belmont Stakes Preview

California Dreamin' - California Chrome can end a 36 year wait for a Triple Crown winner

The Triple Crown dream is well and truly still alive in the US after California Chrome’s fairytale story continued with victory in the Preakness on Saturday.

With two legs of American racing’s Holy Grail under his belt, California Chrome has now arrived in New York ahead of the third and final leg – the Belmont Stakes – on 7th June.

Art Sherman’s charge has history and some pretty damning stats to overcome if he’s to become the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978 but he is head and shoulders above the other three-year-olds in the US this season and hasn’t exactly had hard races in Kentucky or Baltimore.

In the immediate aftermath of the Preakness Ladbrokes went 2/1 that he lifts the Triple Crown which looked generous, they’ve subsequently clipped that to 6/4 but with news that Danza, Kentucky Derby third and to my eye California Chrome’s main danger in the Belmont, will miss the race that 6/4 still looks pretty tasty given many other books have him closer to even money.

Kentucky Derby 2013 Preview

Optical Illusion - Orb can flash past his rivals in Saturday's Kentucky Derby

The 139th running of “the greatest two minutes in sport” has lost a bit of its interest for me this year as the two horses I picked out a while back for the race now won’t run due to injury.

So with both Shanghai Bobby and Violence “off the Derby trail” as they like to say in the US, it’s been back to the drawing board in recent weeks for me.

I would love to see Aidan O’Brien’s Lines Of Battle win but he looks to face a stiff task if he is to do so, but he won well in the UAE Derby at Meydan on World Cup night, although the form of that race is yet to really be tested, and with Ryan Moore missing Saturday’s racing at Newmarket to take the ride you’d have to give him a chance, if only an outside one.

My idea of the winner though is a horse called Orb; a horse that has coincidentally beaten my original two picks in two of his prep races. He narrowly accounted for Violence in the Fountain of Youth and then won the Florida Derby impressively with champion 2yo Shanghai Bobby well beaten down the field.