By Randy Monk

One only has to think back to this year's Super Bowl, when the New England Patriots were thought to be unbeatable, only to lose to the New York Giants.

The cities were the same, with an opposing outcome that is still rather unbelievable when the 2004 Boston Red Sox rallied from three games down to defeat the New York Yankees in the American League Championship series.

Two examples in sports where inevitability didn't come true.

Horse racing is not immune from such unbelievable results, one only has to look at last week's Tampa Bay Derby to see why.

The 2007 two-year-old champion, the undefeated and basically unchallenged War Pass, met six challengers who on paper gave little indication that any of them were capable of surmounting much of a challenge to the three-year-old superstar.

The thing that many race fans forget is that horses are not just bold print names appearing above agate print information in the racing form. Horses are living breathing animals that sometimes don't feel up to par on certain days. They are not machines.

Last Saturday, War Pass, favored at 1-20 odds (the lowest odds you can receive), looked very unmachinelike. War Pass struggled out of the starting gate, didn't have his usual precision like gait and finally lumbered to a last place finish 23 lengths behind the machinelike named winner, Big Truck.

The horses weren't even back and unsaddled before stock in War Pass futures had dwindled to the worth of Bear Stearns stock. Previous backers were asking not if Nick Zito's colt would rebound and still win the Kentucky Derby, but if he would ever run again.

Zito reported on Sunday that nothing appeared to be physically wrong with War Pass. He did say that his young colt had had a slight fever earlier in the week, but much to the veteran trainer's credit he didn't use this as an excuse. He just said he was simply mystified as to why he ran so poorly.

As a father and a handicapper, one thing I've learned about three-year-olds is that, be they human or equine, is that they are not only unpredictable, but also very resilient.

During March Madness, one only has to think of the late great Jim Valvano's words before his North Carolina State team defeated heavily favored Houston for the national championship. "Sure we have a chance," Valvano said. "There are only two teams left playing."

There are more than two horses left in the Triple Crown, but War Pass has proven on the racetrack that he is quite capable of scoring big wins. He's too talented and Zito is too good of a horseman to write off their Derby chances just yet.