By Bloodhorse.com
ARCADIA, Calif. (Mar. 29, 2015) — Trainer Art Sherman didn’t give the decision to send Horse of the Year California Chrome to England a ringing endorsement the morning of March 29.
Hours after it was announced the 4-year-old’s owners intend on sending him to race at Royal Ascot, the California-based trainer—who also wasn’t shy about expressing his opposition to sending the colt to Dubai after last year’s Breeders’ Cup—went on the Roger Stein Show, a radio program in the Los Angeles area.
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“(Majority owner Perry Martin) thinks the horse will do good because he’s won on the grass, but it was a different grass,” Sherman said on the radio, referring to California Chrome’s victory in the Hollywood Derby (gr. IT) in November at Del Mar, his only start on turf to date. “They don’t realize the horses that are going to be involved, they go (clockwise), he’s got to learn to go the opposite way, and everything. It’s going to be rough on him, I think.”
Sherman said Martin and co-owner Steve Coburn didn’t inform him of the decision to send the dual classic winner to Newmarket to train until after California Chrome’s second-place finish in the $10 million Dubai World Cup (UAE-I) at Meydan March 28.
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Racing Post reports California Chrome is scheduled to be based at Rae Guest’s yard at Newmarket and could prep for a run in the June 17 Prince of Wales’s Stakes (Eng-I) at Royal Ascot with a try in the Al Shaqab Lockinge Stakes (Eng-I) at Newbury May 16.
“I would have never done it myself,” Sherman said. “I would have gave the horse more time to kinda unwind. He’s going to be a tired horse after this trip.”
The trainer also appeared melancholy in later comments made on the radio show.
“(Martin) really thinks it’s a beneficial thing for him, but you know me—there’s plenty of grass races in the United States and plenty others, but you know, sometimes when you’re training horses, you gotta go with the play,” Sherman said. “I’ll miss him, I tell ya, when I look at that stall at Los Alamitos and don’t see him there… I wish I was taking my horse back (to California), but that’s not going to happen, so I have to make the best of it.”
Read more on BloodHorse.com: http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/90973/sherman-ascot-could-be-rough-on-chrome#ixzz3VnwUr1jK