Elmont, N.Y. -- All week long, the big green door at Barn 26 was wide open. In the mornings leading up to the Belmont Stakes, journalists and photographers could get a real good look at California Chrome as he was being walked around after morning exercise. The horse would stop, pose for pictures. This was just too good of a story.

Saturday night, as the sun was about to go down, that same door slammed shut after California Chrome went through it after losing his Triple Crown. The fuzzy feel-good jive was gone.

Art Sherman, the grandfatherly trainer who had been so entertaining and accommodating since the Kentucky Derby, didn't feel like talking. He sent his son and assistant, Alan, to a post-race presser with jockey Victor Espinoza to explain what had gone wrong in Belmont 146.

I can understand why Art didn't feel like talking. His shot, probably his only shot at something big like this, was gone.

I don't know how to explain what was going on with Steve Coburn, one of the co-owners of California Chrome. He and Perry Martin make up the team they call "Dumb Ass Partners," the name of their ownership group. After the Belmont, Coburn, was just acting like a dumb ass.

You saw the interview he gave on NBC after Chrome lost. Or, at least by now you've heard about it.

He basically called the winner of the Belmont, a nice horse named Tonalist, a cheater. A coward. Tonalist didn't run in the Kentucky Derby or the Preakness, so Coburn decided that he had way too much of an advantage because he was a fresh horse.

You don't run in the Kentucky Derby, big Steve was saying, you can't run in the Preakness or the Belmont.


Christophe Clement, Tonalist's trainer, wanted his horse to be in the starting gate in Louisville on the first Saturday in May. In order to get to the Derby, Tonalist had to do well in the Wood Memorial to get the points needed to get to Kentucky.

Tonalist didn't make it because he had a minor lung infection and missed the Wood. And then he missed the Derby.

Steve Coburn didn't say anything about that. He sounded like a dope on national television.

"We didn't cheat. We played the game fair and square," Coburn said.

Yes, you did. But so did Tonalist. He won the Peter Pan to get a ticket to the Belmont.

If Tonalist didn't get sick before the Wood, maybe he would have won that and been a factor all during the Triple Crown. He didn't get the chance. Steve Coburn was way out of line ripping into the path that Tonalist took to get to where he got.

Alan Sherman, the 45-year-old son of Chrome's trainer Art Sherman, said later that he had no problems with fresh horses running in the Belmont. He said he would do the same thing. He said the right thing.

Clement and Robert Evans, the owner of Tonalist, declined to comment on the clown show put on NBC by Coburn. They did the right thing.

Coburn should have shown some class and said nothing when NBC stuffed its camera into his face. Tell the world that he was thankful for the ride California Chrome took him and his family and his partner on. Thank the fans for all their support. He should have congratulated the Tonalist camp on what they had just accomplished.

But he didn't. He did the wrong thing. Too bad. Before this one-man act of buffoonery, Coburn had been a media darling during the Triple Crown. He ruined it in a few short minutes on Saturday night.

twilkin@timesunion.com; 518-454-5415; @tjwilkin