TRIPLE CROWN RATINGS

Career Horse S 1 2 3 Earnings 1. Spend A Buck 12 8 2 2 $1,397,509 2. Chief’s Crown 13 9 3 0 $1,279,422 3. Steph. Odyssey 9 4 2 1 $839,635 4. Proud Truth 9 5 2 0 $453,927 5. Fast Account 13 2 6 1 $169,330 6. Skywalker 7 3 1 0 $330,700 7. Tank’s Prospect 12 4 2 2 $932,445 8. Eternal Prince 9 4 2 0 $389,362 9. Rhoman Rule 9 3 1 2 $193,928 10. Creme Fraiche 11 4 4 0 $173,264

REMARKS: Trainer Mike Whittingham had Skywalker at Churchill Downs sooner than any other Kentucky Derby horse. Skywalker arrived in Kentucky on April 10, just a few days after he won the Santa Anita Derby.

“We had three or four solid works at Churchill Downs, and I liked the way the horse was training,” Whittingham said. “But then, the day of the Derby, the track wasn’t nearly the same. It wasn’t close to the surface that the horse had gotten used to in his workouts.”

Skywalker finished sixth, about 11 lengths behind the winner, Spend A Buck, in Saturday’s Derby, and while nobody was devaluating Spend A Buck’s impressive 5-length win on his kind of track, several trainers thought the running surface hurt their chances.

Tank’s Prospect, winner of the Arkansas Derby, finished seventh, a nose behind Skywalker. “The track was so hard, it was stinging my horse,” said Wayne Lukas, who trains Tank’s Prospect. “It was the hardest track for a major race that I’ve ever run a horse on. It was only about an inch deep. The kind of weather they’ve had in Kentucky this spring, it should have been six inches deep. I know the track would like to see somebody come along and break Secretariat’s record (Spend A Buck’s time of 2:00 1/5 was four-fifths of a second off the mark), but you also want to have horses that can run some more the rest of the year.”

Whittingham didn’t go as far as Lukas in his criticism of the track. “It wasn’t dangerous, it was just different than what we trained on,” the trainer said.

Spend A Buck, fourth a week ago, naturally moved to the top of the ratings and Fast Account, because of his fourth-place Derby finish, went from ninth to fifth.

No one was more surprised to see Fast Account go off at 92-1 odds in the Derby than William R. Hawn, the Dallas man who owns him.

“I got so mad when I saw those odds that I went back and bet on him,” Hawn said. “I had never bet on this horse before. I already had a $20,000 bet, the money it cost me just to start him in the race. But 92 to 1; I thought he might be 20 or 30 to 1, tops.”

What made Fast Account’s big price so incongruous was that he had lost by only a nose to Skywalker in the Santa Anita Derby and Skywalker, who finished sixth, was 17-1 Saturday.

“So my horse cost me some money,” Hawn said. Although the Kentucky Derby was a $582,800 race this year, $406,800 went to the winner and fourth paid only $25,000.

Fast Account, like many of the Derby horses, won’t be challenging Spend A Buck in his next race, which will either be the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico on May 18 or the Jersey Derby at Garden State Park on May 27.

“Maybe nobody can run with Spend A Buck,” said Patty Johnson, who trains Fast Account. The way the Derby winner has won his three races this year--by 25 1/2 lengths--she could be right.

Advisory panel for The Times’ Triple Crown Ratings: Lenny Hale, racing secretary at Aqueduct, Belmont Park and Saratoga; Frank (Jimmy) Kilroe, vice president for racing at Santa Anita; and Tommy Trotter, director of racing at Arlington Park and racing secretary at Gulfstream Park.