Champion Silver Charm, the early favorite for Horse of the Year after winning the San Pasqual Handicap at Santa Anita in his 1999 debut, arrived yesterday at Gulfstream Park for Saturday’s Grade 1 Donn Handicap, in which he’ll carry highweight of 126 pounds against eight likely opponents.
The big gray 5-year-old, who won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness in 1997 and last year’s $4 million Dubai World Cup, left California on a chartered flight about 4:30 a.m. (Pacific time) and landed at Opa-Locka Airport north of Miami at 12:50 p.m. Four police cars and six motorcycles escorted his van from the airport to the track.
Also on the plane was one of Silver Charm’s chief rivals in the Donn, Puerto Madero.
The Donn is the first event in the inaugural ”NTRA Champions on Fox” series of races for older horses that concludes with the Pacific Classic at Del Mar in August and offers up to $5 million in bonuses. Fox will televise the Donn live from 4 to 5 p.m. Saturday as part of the network’s pre-Super Bowl coverage. *New York City OTB, caught in a Catch-22, is anxious to get simulcasting back from Santa Anita but won’t give away the farm for it.
OTB stopped carrying the Santa Anita races New Year’s Day after the southern California track jacked up the prices for its signal beyond what OTB thought prudent to pay.
”I wouldn’t call it negotiations, but we are talking,” OTB president Bill Carnevale said yesterday. ”We are trying to work this out.”