( AS NINE SLEEK THOROUGHBREDS exploded out of the starting gate in the $38,000 Prix Omnium II at the Saint-Cloud racecourse outside Paris earlier this month, all binoculars were trained on a single horse. In the diffident manner that marks his style, the diminutive three-year-old, a crooked white blaze crossing his handsome forehead, hung well back. He settled into sixth place in the 1,600-m contest, moving along at a leisurely gallop that offered no hint of the fireworks to come.
Then, suddenly, Arazi made his move. Shooting past two horses in the back straight, he swiftly overtook the rest of the field and, with turf-devouring nonchalance, loped to victory by five lengths. In the winner's circle, tossing his head like a young virtuoso after a brilliant performance, the horse drew the fond gaze of his jockey, Steve Cauthen. Said Cauthen: "Arazi rides just like a Cadillac."
If Arazi can repeat his latest performance in this Saturday's Kentucky Derby, where he is the favorite in a field of such impressive challengers as A.P. Indy and Pistols and Roses, the young stallion could earn the right to graze in horse racing's Elysian Fields alongside the greatest track legends of all time. Already the winner of six major-stakes races in France worth $700,000, as well as the $1 million Breeder's Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs last year, Arazi is fast winning a reputation as the second coming of Secretariat. Says Joe Hirsch, a columnist with the New Jersey-based Daily Racing Form: "He is such an extraordinary animal that he makes other great horses look like hacks."
Many great horses have been bigger and stronger. Arazi is small -- he stands 5 ft. 2 in. at the shoulder -- and is vulnerable in the knees. Five months ago he underwent arthroscopic surgery to remove bone spurs in both his front legs, though he is now fully recovered. Yet he retains one outstanding quality: enormous acceleration. Explains Arazi's French trainer Francois Boutin: "It is not his speed that counts as much as his courage to overtake other horses at the right moment and win races." With each appearance in the winner's circle, speculation has also grown over the mutually exclusive ambitions of Arazi's wealthy co-owners. One of them is American Allen Paulson, the chairman of Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. of Savannah, who bought him as a foal in 1989 for $350,000. Paulson, the owner of bloodstock valued at more than $100 million, wants his prize horse to compete in the three Triple Crown races: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes. Winning them all would be worth nearly $1 million in prize money, plus a bonus of $5 million.
Arazi's other owner, United Arab Emirates Defense Minister Sheik Mohammed bin-Rashid al-Maktoum, whose family possesses more racehorses than anyone else in the world, has other ideas. He would like Arazi to shoot for an unprecedented transatlantic double by running in the Kentucky Derby and then going on in June to the $1 million Epsom Derby, Britain's premier flat race. Contesting Epsom as well as the full Triple Crown is impossible because the events are spaced too closely on the calendar.