Solis Is Hoping to Revisit the Past

Here’s something for the people behind Preakness favorite Barbaro to worry about:

Alex Solis and Snow Chief, revisited.

Twenty years ago, Solis was aboard the favorite in the 1986 Kentucky Derby, only to finish 11th, badly beaten by Ferdinand.

Two weeks later, Solis and Snow Chief came back to take the Preakness, besting Ferdinand by four lengths.

That is precisely the sort of reversal Solis is hoping for in the Preakness Stakes on Saturday in Baltimore after finishing in a dead heat for fourth in the Derby on Brother Derek, the morning-line favorite, 9 1/2 lengths behind Barbaro.

“It is kind of like that,” Solis said. “Hopefully, we’ll get the same results.”

The disappointment of the loss two weeks ago at Churchill Downs -- his 15th disappointment in 15 trips to the Derby -- was among the most crushing of his career.

“It hits you in the soul,” said Solis, who knelt by trainer Dan Hendricks’ wheelchair as he came off the track, seemingly near tears.

Solis had never been more convinced he had a Derby winner. Not just the horse, but the confluence of people and stories. Hendricks was two years removed from a motocross accident that left him in a wheelchair. Solis had broken his back in a Del Mar spill only weeks later. And there they were together, with Brother Derek.

“It felt so right. It felt like, ‘This is it,’ ” Solis said. “Everything was going our way.”

And then it wasn’t, and it was over so quickly Hendricks offered a one-word response.

“Anticlimactic.”

Worse than that, Solis said.

“I cried. It’s very painful,” he said. “Knowing the kind of horse that you have. The trip I had. Great people like Dan and [owner Cecil Peacock] and, of course, the horse. It’s very disappointing.”

His wife, Sheila, could see it.

“He gets very quiet, totally not himself,” she said. “I think it was pretty close to the most disappointed I’ve ever seen him.”

Solis and Brother Derek are back for another go at Barbaro at Pimlico Race Course, where there will be only nine horses in the field, the smallest in the Preakness since 2000.

“I always said the Preakness should be our race, more than the Derby,” Hendricks said.

The 20-horse field in the Derby was part of the problem for Brother Derek after the horse’s connections drew the 16th pick in the post position draw. Hendricks and Solis conferred and chose Post 18, in the auxiliary gate.

Hendricks now second-guesses himself, saying he should have picked Post 3 on the inside, instead of allowing Solis to get hung out wide almost the entire race.

“On Wednesday, the weather forecast was, it was going to rain on Saturday,” Solis said. “Dan and I talked about it. It’s going to rain, and if it rains, all that water’s going to pile down on the inside. Everybody knows, if it rains, the outside’s going to have an advantage.

“We did our plan and we did our homework, but things didn’t pan out like we planned. It was wonderful weather.”

Then there was the lost shoe, something Hendricks has downplayed, not wanting to look as if he were making excuses. Solis said it was huge.

Neither of them knows when Brother Derek lost his right front shoe, possibly in the post parade, but Solis knew it was gone early in the race.

“He was spinning his wheels around the first turn,” he said. “It’s like running your car with three tires. It’s very difficult. He did it, went around there like a soldier.”

The Derby remains the one real gap in a career in which Solis has won more than 4,300 races and more than $193 million in purse money -- first among active riders and seventh all-time.

But no jockey has ridden more horses in the Derby without winning than Solis, though he has finished second three times, with Captain Bodgit in 1997, Victory Gallop in 1998 and Aptitude in 2000.

He is a finalist this year for the thoroughbred racing Hall of Fame -- the class that is to be inducted will be announced May 30 -- and if he isn’t elected this year, the Derby drought probably will be the reason.

If some want to call him racing’s Phil Mickelson, he doesn’t mind.

“I’m flattered,” said Solis, a charity golf tournament regular who knows that Mickelson has two Masters titles now. “He’s an incredible golfer. I was so happy for him when he finally won.

“I just hope I’m not 60 years old, trying to win the Kentucky Derby,” Solis, 42, said with a laugh. “My kids sit down, and say, ‘OK, Dad, next year, next year.’ ”

It took him days to put aside the disappointment of this year’s Derby, but Solis has had some good days since.

None more so than Saturday, when he won all three graded stakes races at Hollywood Park, the $150,000 Mervyn LeRoy with Surf Cat, the $250,000 Jim Murray Memorial Handicap with Grey Swallow, and the $100,000 Los Angeles Handicap with Siren Lure.

Yes, a very good day, Sheila said.

“He’s been doing well. He’s happy with the place he is in his life,” she said. “The Derby is such a hard race. Someday, you want to win it, and you get that close. There’s so much buildup, the letdown is intense.”

In the last two weeks, Solis has mentioned Snow Chief.

“He said, ‘It’s been 20 years,’ ” Sheila said. “We can’t believe it. We didn’t realize we were getting old so quickly. It’s kind of like that year. He had high hopes going into that Derby too.”

Some questioned whether Solis, only 22 in 1986, chased the early speed too much in the Derby that year, but Solis said Snow Chief simply didn’t like the Churchill track.

“We came back and went to the Preakness to show he was the best horse,” he said.

He’s trying to do that again.

“Not to take anything away from Barbaro, but I still have the best horse in the country, in my mind,” he said.

“I just hope that I get the trip I’m hoping for. I know my horse is a hell of a horse and I’d like to see him in the winner’s circle.”

*

Barbaro, who won’t arrive at Pimlico until today, breezed two furlongs after a mile gallop Thursday at Fair Hill Training Center in Elkton, Md., covering the distance in an unofficial 24 1/5 seconds.

“He blew out a quarter-mile,” trainer Michael Matz said.

*

Funny Cide, the 2003 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner, will run in Saturday’s William Donald Schaefer Handicap on the Preakness undercard, trainer Barclay Tagg said. Tagg also had entered Funny Cide in today’s $500,000 Pimlico Special but decided against running that race.

*

Don Amos, Magna Entertainment Corp.’s chief operating officer, announced that the racing industry had contributed $250,000 to establish the Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund, with a short-term goal of raising $1 million to aid jockeys who have suffered catastrophic racetrack injuries.

*

First post at Hollywood Park on Saturday will be 12:20 p.m. to accommodate betting on the Preakness and other Pimlico races. Gates open at 8:45 a.m. today and Saturday.