Bayern wins Pennsylvania Derby; California Chrome sixth

They packed the apron in front of the glass-encased grandstand and surrounded the paddock, filling the steps up to the jocks room, straining to get a look at reigning Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner California Chrome. He was about to contest the $1 million Pennsylvania Derby, the first reigning Derby winner to appear in the race.

Once the race began, Bayern's jockey said he couldn't see California Chrome. As Martin Garcia pointed out, he wasn't turning around to look back.

The crowd at Parx Racing, estimated at 16,000, got a thrill early Saturday evening, but it was from Bayern, trained by Bob Baffert, who led from the gate to the wire and set a track record over the 11/8-mile distance. The colt had gotten away on the lead to win the Haskell Invitational, and he did it again Saturday, finishing in 1 minute, 46.96 seconds to win by 53/4 lengths over Tapiture.

"It was an easy pace," Garcia said, "and when I asked him to go" - Garcia just waved his hand.

California Chrome, coming off a 105-day layoff after the Belmont Stakes, finished sixth. His trainer, Art Sherman, fully expects to take him to the Breeders' Cup Classic and acknowledged he needed this race after the long layoff, that it would do Chrome a lot of good.

The attendance estimate for the Bensalem track was a guess, since people admitted for free don't have to be counted, but the all-sources betting handle is counted to the dollar. It was $10,396,671, up 88 percent from last year. A nice return on investment, even factoring in the $300,000 in bonuses paid to the connections of California Chrome and Bayern for showing up.

The Chrome connections got $200,000 for winning the Derby and Preakness, and Bayern's connections received $100,000 for winning the Haskell. All payable as soon as the horses got in the starting gate Saturday.

Sherman had hoped another horse would hook up with Bayern, making him work on the lead, and suggested that if it didn't happen, California Chrome would have to do it. That didn't happen, either. The combination of an inside position after leaving the No. 1 gate and the layoff was too much, although Chrome sat in third for much of the race. Sherman pointed out that if his horse had hooked up with Bayern, it might not have changed the outcome.

"He's a funny horse. If he gets down in there and you have to keep checking him and checking him, he gets a little disinterested," Sherman said of Chrome's inside position.

"He was trying, but there was no chance," said California Chrome's jockey, Victor Espinoza. "You can only hold him so much. At some point, you have to let him run, but when he wanted to run, we had no place to go."

The rail and the lead were good places to be all day, and Bayern led through easy early fractions of 24.07 and 47.89 seconds before he put it into another gear.

"That was just a powerful performance," said Baffert, who shipped the horse East but watched from his home in California. Baffert said of Chrome: "He was the target - we weren't the target."

In his last race, the Travers, Bayern had gone off as the favorite and took the lead, but it was a contested one, and Bayern eventually faded to 10th. Assistant trainer Jimmy Barnes said the heavy track at Saratoga wasn't a good one for his horse, two days after a rainstorm. "I drew a line through it walking back to the barn," Barnes said.

This time, it was California Chrome's trainer saying, "It's always useful to have a race under your belt. He's going to be a different horse next time."