A Current Affair
By Charles Cohen

You'd think a guy like Kevin Grace would be looking forward to May 18 like no 
other day this year. He is, after all, a Baltimore-bred horse-racing buff. He 
even works at the track, manning the Maryland Racing Commission's licensing 
office at Old Hilltop (or Laurel or the state fairgrounds, depending on the 
racing season). 
But Grace is less exercised about this Saturday's 127th running of the Preakness 
than the 99th edition, run in 1974, when he was 5 years old. That's the one 
Little Current won. 

You remember Little Current, a rangy chestnut with an explosive finishing kick 
who, after languishing for much of the race in last, blew by 11 horses to claim 
the second jewel of the Triple Crown by a resounding seven lengths, then went on 
to win the Belmont in similar fashion three weeks later. Or maybe you don't. And 
that's what bothers Kevin Grace. 

Grace views Little Current's obscurity as nothing less than an injustice. Today, 
while Little Current--at 31, the oldest living Preakness winner--enjoys a 
peaceful dotage at a veterinary clinic outside Seattle, his biggest fan mounts a 
campaign to get the old boy his due: induction into the National Racing Hall of 
Fame in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Grace has spent three years on the effort, 
calling racing writers and setting up a Web site to promote his equine hero. 

"It's kind of like finding a treasure chest in your back yard, and you start 
researching it and more and more comes to life," says Grace, who grew up and 
still lives in Northeast Baltimore's Chinquapin neighborhood a few miles east of 
Pimlico. 

To Grace's mind, Little Current would get the recognition he deserves if not for 
two cruel twists of fate: a rough trip in the ridiculously crowded '74 Kentucky 
Derby that may have prevented him from joining the 11 winners of racing's Triple 
Crown, and the perverse luck of being born only a year after perhaps the most 
illustrious of those 11, Secretariat. 

"Everyone is 'Secretariat, Secretariat, Secretariat,'" says Grace, referring to 
the legendary big red colt who captured the country's imagination in sweeping 
the '73 Triple Crown. "[Little Current] will always be in the shadows of 
Secretariat." 

Grace himself was largely unaware of Little Current until 1997. A racing 
enthusiast since a teenage trip to Pimlico (for a giveaway of free Ralph Lauren 
merchandise, he recalls), he developed a vacation hobby of visiting prominent 
thoroughbreds stabled where he travels, meeting the likes of Triple Crown 
winners Affirmed and the recently deceased Seattle Slew. Five years ago, after 
paying his respects to Little Current on a trip to Washington state, he saw, for 
the first time, a tape of the 1974 Preakness. Watching Little Current thundering 
past horses around the tight final turn and down the stretch, Grace says, he 
recognized that he'd been in the proximity of true greatness. 

"This track has one of the sharpest turns in North America," he says, standing 
by the finishing pole at Pimlico. "When I saw Little Current's race I was 
definitely hooked, and I would do anything for that horse." 

Hungry for more, Grace got hold of a tape of the '74 Belmont and saw Little 
Current march to another come-from-behind seven-length victory. Then he went 
back to that year's Kentucky Derby to see what had gone wrong in Louisville. 
Trained to lay back in the pack, then sprint to the finish ("Like a cork out of 
a champagne bottle," Grace says), Little Current was trapped behind the biggest 
Derby field ever--23 horses. Pinned down in heavy traffic, he still managed to 
put on his patented stretch run but only made it to fifth behind winner 
Cannonade. 

"The best horses don't win the Kentucky Derby," Grace says with disgust. "I call 
it a cavalry charge." (Apparently, Derby officials agreed. The '74 race led to 
the adoption of what Grace calls the "Little Current rule," limiting the field 
in the Run for the Roses to 20 horses.) 

After the Belmont, Little Current ran into more misfortune. He narrowly lost his 
next two starts, then, racing on turf for the first time, he chipped a bone in 
his right front ankle and was sent to stud, first in his native Kentucky, then 
in Louisiana. (He had a middling career as a sire, the highlight of which may 
have been being bred to a mare from Queen Elizabeth's stable.) His present 
owners, veterinarians Mark and Ann Hansen, bought him in 1995 (like Grace, Mark 
Hansen had became enamored of the horse after watching his explosive finishes) 
and gave him a quiet retirement in the Pacific Northwest. 

Grace travels regularly to Monroe, Wash., to see Little Current, reportedly a 
spry, playful old stallion who perks up at the sound of the videotapes of his 
races shown in his stall to visitors. And the horse has taken a shine to his 
East Coast admirer. "Kevin is his number-one fan," Ann Hansen says. "When he 
hears Kevin, he gets the look like a little kid when Grandpa comes. His eyes 
light up." 

Grace has also gotten in touch with Little Current's former owners, jockeys, and 
trainers about the Hall of Fame campaign, even sending Lou Rondinello, who 
trained the horse to winning form, a clipping from Little Current's mane. 

"It's an obsession, really," says Rondinello, now retired to Melville, N.Y., of 
Grace's quixotic quest. But he confesses his own love for the charismatic horse: 
"What can I say? I'm a trainer, and he was like one of my kids." 

But Rondinello's 31-year-old "kid" isn't any closer to joining his sport's 
historic elite in Saratoga. When the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame 
announced this year's inductees on April 30, Little Current wasn't among them. 
He hadn't even been listed on the ballot. 

Grace says he'll continue to lobby the racing writers who cast the Hall of Fame 
votes to overlook Little Current's Derby mishap and modest overall record (four 
wins in 16 career starts) and see the gutsy champ who'd blow by horses in the 
stretch as if they were barely moving at all. 

"I want him to get the roses that he was denied in 1974," Grace says. "I want 
him to get his just due."