Kentucky Derby Diary : Spend A Buck Wasn’t in Traffic Until Later

For Spend A Buck, winning the Kentucky Derby was easy. Getting the 3-year-old colt from the track to the winner’s circle in the Churchill Downs infield was the hard part.

A fan somehow got on the track and slapped Spend A Buck on his backside as he was about to take a right-hand turn into the winner’s circle.

Cam Gambolati, Spend A Buck’s trainer who was trailing the horse for the post-race ceremonies, pushed the spectator out of the way and repeatedly pointed to the culprit so track security personnel could take him into custody.

The incident detracted from Gambolati’s celebration. “I don’t understand it,” he said. “They’ve got 40,000 cops here and they can’t keep these guys away from my horse. A valuable horse like this, and he’s getting bothered by some idiot who wants to get his picture in the paper.”

Before the race, Gambolati and Spend A Buck were introduced to the frenzy that makes the Derby more than just a test of racing speed.

“I couldn’t believe how wild people were outside the paddock,” Gambolati said. “We were going in there right behind Proud Truth and somebody came up and screamed right into the other horse’s ear. People like that have no respect for these great horses.”

Still, victory was sweet for the Spend A Buck bunch, which suffered through pre-race theorizing that their colt’s record was diluted because he was beating mediocre opposition at New Jersey’s Garden State Park.

“Chief’s Crown (the Derby favorite who finished third) had no excuse,” Gambolati said. “He was right behind us, but he couldn’t catch us. I knew going into the first turn that Eternal Prince was in trouble because he wasn’t anywhere close. Meantime, Angel (Cordero, who rode Spend A Buck) was strangling my horse, trying to get him to relax.

“On the turn for home, I was really confident. I didn’t think anybody was going to run us down then. It was just a question of whether he could get the mile and a quarter.”

Dennis Diaz, who bought Spend A Buck for $12,500 and his dam, Belle de Jour, for an undisclosed but “considerably higher price,” hasn’t bet on the horse in any of his races, but his wife, Linda, did.

“I was going to bet $100 across the board,” Linda said, “but then I decided that I can’t do that. I wound up betting $2 across, and bet a lot of other tickets for people, including my hairdresser. I’d say that there will be about 50 of the $2 win tickets that I won’t cash, though. I’m going to save those for souvenirs.”

Dennis Diaz, while saying that the decision on Spend A Buck running in the Preakness Stakes won’t be made until today or Monday, gave indications that he might be leaning toward running in the Jersey Derby at Garden State Park on May 27. That could be a $2.6-million pot for Spend A Buck--a $600,000 purse and a $2-million bonus for winning.

“That would be the biggest payday in racing,” Diaz said. “And the colt practically bought that track before he left, the way he won the Cherry Hill Mile and the Garden State Stakes by big margins. Another thing--he might need the nine extra days the Jersey Derby would give him, as opposed to running in the Preakness.”

Intact is the superstition that the Spend A Buck camp has maintained since groom Mary Hale noticed that the colt was biting someone around the barn on the day of the races he won.

“The colt got at least four of us in the last 24 hours,” Gambolati said. “Not real good bites, but he got us. We all sacrificed ourselves to keep that thing going.”

Times over Churchill Downs’ hard racing strip were exceptionally fast in races leading up to the Derby. The six-furlong fifth race, for maidens, was won by a first-time starter in 1:09 4/5, less than a second slower than the track record. The sixth race was won by a 3-year-old colt in 1:09 3/5.

In other words, the track was playing like Garden State Park, where Spend A Buck has notched two of the most convincing wins of his career this year.