BALTIMORE — Good omens, bad omens, Arthur B. Hancock III has a million of them.
Sunday Silence, according to Hancock, might not have swept the 1989 Triple Crown because the colt's owner saw only two moths, not three, on a top-floor window at the World Trade Center in New York the night before the Belmont Stakes.
Sunday Silence, Hancock suggests, might have won the Kentucky Derby that year because he found a penny--minted in 1982--on the backstretch at Churchill Downs a couple of days before the race. Gato Del Sol, owned in a partnership that included Hancock, had won the Derby in 1982.
The Hancock omens go on and on.
Just before the Blue Grass Stakes last month, a bird dumped on Hancock's shoulder in the Keeneland paddock. In what smacks of an old wives' tale, Hancock considers getting hit by a bird to be good luck. It's difficult to argue with the Kentucky breeder: Menifee won the Blue Grass by 1 1/4 lengths.
(Try foisting that bird-drop good-luck theory off on John Mabee. Shortly before this year's Kentucky Derby, Mabee stepped out from underneath the shedrow at Churchill Downs and was nailed by a dirty bird. Mabee's horses, Excellent Meeting and General Challenge, finished fifth and 11th, respectively, in the Derby).
Menifee, second by a neck to Charismatic in the Derby, is the 5-2 morning-line favorite today at Pimlico, where the 124th Preakness, the middle leg of the Triple Crown, will be run. Shortly before the race, you might find Hancock in the parking lot, looking for a lucky penny or trying to find a bird he can stand under.
Hancock's accounts of his many omens are so persistent that even Bob Lewis, the co-owner--with his wife Beverly--of Charismatic, is becoming a convert. The Lewises, from Newport Beach, are not a particularly superstitious couple, but on Thursday, at a Preakness ritual known as "the alibi breakfast," there was Bob Lewis, talking about how losing teeth was a good sign during Silver Charm's Triple Crown run in 1997, and going on to explain how he had had emergency dental work again two weeks ago, a few hours before Charismatic won the Derby.
But Arthur Hancock's birds and Bob Lewis' teeth will not settle this Preakness. Racing luck, as it did in the Derby, may once more help determine the winner, because even 12 horses--with the scratch of Silverbulletday and the expected scratch of Vicar--are a crowd over a Pimlico racing layout known for its tight turns.
