Steve Dennis continues his acclaimed series celebrating 150 years of the Kentucky Derby with the Caracas Cannonball, who arrived from Venezuela to stun the US racing public in 1971
Where to begin with Canonero II, the famous ‘Caracas Cannonball’, the hero of Venezuela who inked himself improbably, indelibly into the record books, into the consciousness of an entire nation?
Is it with the $1,200 purchase price? The chickens and the ducks? Maybe the Triple Crown nomination request destined for the rubbish bin? What about the dream in which a dead mother had forecast future glory?
Or perhaps the words ‘missing data unavailable’ in the past-performance box in the Daily Racing Form, the official equivalent of a shrug and a dismissive wave of the hand?
Every facet of the story gleams like sunshine on chrome, pushes hard at the boundaries of belief even though it’s been true for more than 50 years. Begin where you like, it ends the same way. Canonero II won the Kentucky Derby in 1971, becoming the only horse trained outside the US to claim America’s greatest race; now, back to the beginning.
The colt was a sales reject, passed over by potential buyers because of a crooked right foreleg and an undistinguished pedigree. Bloodstock agent Luis Navas bought him for an opening bid of $1,200 and passed him on to Venezuelan industrialist Pedro Baptista, whose business was flirting so openly with bankruptcy that he was registering his horses in the name of his son-in-law Edgar Caibett.
A month after Canonero – here we can park the racetrack formality of his Roman numerals – had won on debut at La Rinconada racecourse in Caracas, his trainer Juan Arias sent him to California in the hope that he would run well enough to fetch a good price.
In the space of six days Canonero finished third in an allowance and fifth in the Del Mar Futurity, a performance that did attract a couple of potential buyers, although the deals failed to materialise because no-one with the colt could speak English.
So Canonero went back home to the racing backwater of Venezuela, and that would surely be the last anyone heard of him.
Improbabilities and impossibilities
Thus far, there are elements of conventionality in the tale of Canonero. Henceforth, there are none. It becomes a helter-skelter of improbabilities and impossibilities, taking everyone along for the ride.
In those pre-internet days, horses had to be nominated for the Triple Crown races in person. Baptista phoned Pimlico vice-president Chick Lang to nominate Canonero, but Lang had never heard of the horse and thought someone was playing a trick on him.
He had scribbled the name on a cocktail napkin and was about to throw it away, but paused long enough to check out this mystery contender. Apparently there was a horse called Canonero after all; Lang made the entry.
Meanwhile, down south, Canonero had been doing well. Since returning from his trip to Del Mar he had gone five-for-nine at high-altitude La Rinconada, in the process proving his stamina for the Kentucky Derby with a victory over ten furlongs.
That was the dream, and when Baptista slept he also dreamed of his dead mother, who told him that his horse would win the Derby. The plan grew like a wildfire in his mind.
What do they say about best-laid plans? Two weeks before the Derby, Canonero was put on the plane to Miami. An engine caught fire; he came back. A second attempt was aborted en route with mechanical problems; he came back.
Another aeroplane was located, a freight flight loaded with a cargo of chickens and ducks, who all made a lot of noise about moving over to make room for Canonero.
This time the plane reached Miami without incident. Unfortunately, Canonero didn’t have the correct paperwork, so he had to stay on the plane for 12 hours in the Florida heat while the red tape was untangled. When he finally got the all-clear, he was then detained for four days in quarantine because his blood tests had not been done, and by the time he was free to go he had lost 70lb.
Further indignities
There were further indignities in store. Canonero was vanned 1,100 miles to Churchill Downs, where officials wouldn’t let him into the track because – once again – no-one with him could speak English, and he looked a physical wreck. Eventually he was allotted a stall; the big race was less than a week away.
And soon the racetrackers were laughing at Canonero, who plodded through his pre-race exercises. “They call my horse a turtle,” said an indignant Arias. “They say we are clowns.”
In the only future book available, Canonero had been 500-1. For the Derby, he was bracketed with five other longshots as the ‘field’, a sort of safety in numbers that offered bettors odds of just below 9-1 – $8.70 for $1, to be precise. The 14-5 favourite in the 20-horse contest – not a strong Derby, it must be said – was Unconscious, runner-up in the Santa Anita Derby behind Churchill Downs third-choice Jim French.
Those placing bets pored over the past-performance charts in the Daily Racing Form. If they had glanced at Canonero’s name, which they almost certainly didn’t, they would have seen the words ‘missing data unavailable’ in place of his three wins and three third-places at La Rinconada on his last six starts.
No-one had bothered to find out anything about his Venezuelan form. It was a snub, a stinging rebuke to his very presence in the field. But Canonero had put back most of the weight he had lost, and Arias cunningly wheeled him out at dawn on raceday for a whip-song workout. He was ready, and after what had come before, the race was the easy part.
For three-quarters of a mile, Canonero was as anonymous as his past-performance chart suggested, bringing up the rear under jockey Gustavo ‘The Monster’ Avila, who had won twice on him at La Rinconada.
As they approached the far turn Avila turned him loose, sending Canonero on a rushing, swooping move around the outside, inhaling his rivals one by one until he made the top of the stretch in fourth place.
He had materialised as if from nowhere, which summed up his entire Derby adventure. Canonero came down the stretch on the wrong lead, hit the front a furlong out and easily drew off, Avila – wearing the plain brown silks of Baptista’s son Pedro jnr – bringing him home under a hand-ride to win by 3¾ lengths from the late-closing Jim French.
Award-winning understatement
“What a surprise!” intoned the racecaller, an award-winning piece of understatement. He was practically the only one who wasn’t speechless.
If Canonero had run as a lone betting interest, he would likely have been the biggest longshot ever to win a Derby. Yet there he was in the winner’s circle, the miracle mystery horse who had come so far in so many ways, and Arias was not speechless. His pride, his vindication were not lost in translation.
“He is a horse of destiny,” he said. “He is the champion of all the people – black and white, rich and poor, American and Venezuelan, everyone.”
Two weeks later the horse of destiny won the Preakness in track-record time, but was then fourth in the Belmont, the graft of the previous six weeks taking a toll on his health, his spirit.
It might be said that he disappointed the thousands of Latinos who turned out in New York to cheer for him, but that would be wrong. They loved Canonero for who he was, where he came from and what he had done. If it was hard to know where to begin, it is easy to see where to finish.
At home in Caracas, across wider Venezuela, in the bleachers at Belmont Park, the uniform of choice was a slogan T-shirt that encapsulated the whole crazy story in a cry of triumph: Viva Venezuela! Viva Canonero!
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