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Spend A Buck Will Not Run in Preakness : Owner Picks Jersey Derby and Chance at $2.6 Million

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Times Staff Writer

Call it the Triple Frown. Because frowning is what racing officials at the Triple Crown tracks--Churchill Downs, Pimlico and Belmont Park--were doing Tuesday after Dennis Diaz, owner of Kentucky Derby winner Spend A Buck, announced that his colt would run in the Jersey Derby at Garden State Park May 27 instead of the Preakness at Pimlico May 18.

By not running in the Preakness, the second race in the Triple Crown, Spend A Buck will miss a chance to become only the 12th horse to sweep the prestigious series for 3-year-olds. Instead, he will run at Garden State, where a win will be worth $2.6 million--the $600,000 winner’s share of a $1-million purse and $2 million in bonus money that the Cherry Hill, N.J., track has offered to any horse that sweeps the track’s three 3-year-old stakes and the Kentucky Derby.

Spend A Buck had already won two of those Garden State races going into Saturday’s Kentucky Derby, and his overpowering 5-length win at Churchill Downs left Diaz with a tough decision: Enter the Preakness, where a win would be worth about $300,000 and would give the horse a shot at the Triple Crown in the Belmont Stakes June 8, or run in the Jersey Derby, where a win is instant riches.

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Diaz, who bought Spend A Buck for $12,500 as a yearling and already has seen him win almost $1.4 million, went for a bird in hand as opposed to two in the bush. The decision reduces the Preakness to a runner-up derby, guarantees that the Belmont won’t have the drama of a horse running for the Triple Crown and has shocked racing’s traditionalists.

It will be only the second time in the last 26 years, and the eighth time in the last 56, that the Derby winner won’t be running in the Preakness.

From his hotel room in Cherry Hill Tuesday, the 42-year-old Diaz inhaled and gave the reasons for a decision that he had reached only 90 minutes before.

“We’re doing what’s best for the colt,” he said. “The Jersey Derby gives him nine extra days between races. After he had knee surgery last November, he ran under a compressed schedule in order to be ready for the Kentucky Derby, and the Derby was his fourth race in six weeks. These are fragile animals, and extra time off should do him good.

“Let’s face it, $2.6 million is a lot of money. The Triple Crown isn’t the only way to establish a horse’s value (for breeding) anymore. Even now, the horse has nothing to prove. He went into the lions’ den in the Derby and ate the lions. And he didn’t leave any scraps, either. He beat last year’s 2-year-old champion (Chief’s Crown, who finished third) by 5 3/4 lengths. Last year, Chief’s Crown beat us by 1 1/2 lengths, so I figure that right now we’re 4 lengths better than the champion.

“We like this place (Garden State), and Spend A Buck loves this race track.

In his only two starts at Garden State, Spend A Buck won the Cherry Hill Mile by 10 1/2 lengths April 6, then two weeks later won the Garden State Stakes by 9 1/2 lengths, running 1 1/8 miles in 1:45 4/5, which was only two-fifths of a second slower than Secretariat’s world record for the distance.

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Diaz said that Spend A Buck also won’t be running in the Belmont Stakes, because the 1 1/2-mile race is scheduled less than two weeks after the 1-mile Jersey Derby.

Diaz did not give medication as a reason to bypass the Triple Crown chase, but Spend A Buck did bleed after winning the Garden State Stakes. He ran with a small dose of furosemide, a diuretic commonly given to bleeders, in the Kentucky Derby and can use the medication to run in both the Preakness and the Jersey Derby. But in New York, where the Belmont is run, no horses are permitted to race with medication.

The last Kentucky Derby winner not to run in the Preakness was Gato Del Sol in 1982. Before that, it was Tomy Lee in 1959.

Eddie Gregson, Gato Del Sol’s trainer, skipped the Preakness because he thought that the distance didn’t suit his colt’s plodding, late-running style. At 1 3/16 miles, the Preakness is a sixteenth of a mile shorter than the Derby.

Chick Lang, the general manager of Pimlico, took Gato Del Sol’s absence as a snub and castigated Gregson publicly.

Lang told the Associated Press Tuesday afternoon that he accepted Diaz’s decision as part of the game, but was sharply critical of Robert Brennan, the president of Garden State Park.

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“I was raised in this game, so you know how I feel about tradition,” said Lang, whose father rode 1928 Kentucky Derby winner Reigh Count and whose grandfather trained Derby winner Judge Himes in 1903. “Brennan has no regard for anybody or anything.”

Lang said he was confident that Spend A Buck was headed for the Preakness until he heard that Brennan had sent his private jet to pick up Diaz and that the colt had been sent to Garden State.

“Once Brennan got him behind closed doors . . . what the hell. He probably made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Harry Truman used to say, ‘The buck stops here.’ Well, this time the buck stopped at Garden State.

“Sure, I’d like to have Spend A Buck, but I can’t compete with Brennan. I drive a Ford, cut my own grass and bring a sandwich to work in a brown bag. But when I go to sleep, I rest, and when I look into the mirror to shave, I don’t have to apologize to anybody. I don’t feel guilty.

“My father always told me that class will show in horses and in people, but not necessarily in that order.” Diaz, meanwhile, said that Brennan had offered nothing extra to persuade him to bypass the Preakness in favor of the Jersey Derby.

“I want it known that Bob didn’t dangle any carrot in front of me,” he said. “This was a decision that was made without any extra benefits being offered by Brennan.”

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Herman Cohen, president of Pimlico, said: “I’m not disappointed at all that the horse isn’t coming. The Preakness is still the middle jewel in the Triple Crown, and we’ll have some class horses this year, and it will be a class race.

“The wrong horse won the Derby. He ran a big race with a smart jockey (Angel Cordero) but he hasn’t proved anything yet. And even if he wins the next race (the Jersey Derby), it won’t prove a thing.”

From Churchill Downs, track president Tom Meeker said: “I’m not surprised what Spend A Buck’s people did, because the economic considerations were strong, but I’m saddened by the fact that they’re skipping the Preakness. I don’t think this will kill the Triple Crown, but it certainly won’t do it any good.”

After the Derby, Diaz kept referring to the Jersey Derby as the biggest payday in racing, an indication that he was leaning that way. Cam Gambolati, who trains Spend A Buck, seemed to be favoring the Preakness, although he admitted that the decision was not his.

Lang was on Diaz from the time Spend A Buck left the Derby winner’s circle and may have rubbed the owner the wrong way. Lang’s big argument for the Triple Crown was that a sweep could make the horse worth approximately $50 million as a stallion.

“He sounded just like a CPA,” Diaz said. “He talked about the differences between capital gains and deferred income.”

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Pimlico’s trump card appeared to be Will Farish, an important Kentucky breeder who had been interested in buying a piece of Spend A Buck since the colt won the Garden State Stakes. Farish won the Preakness with Bee Bee Bee in 1972 and reportedly would have recommended taking Spend A Buck to Pimlico if he had bought an interest in the colt.

But negotiations between Farish and Diaz broke off in Versailles, Ky., Monday afternoon, and Diaz said Tuesday that there is a good chance the colt will run only in his and his wife’s name in the Jersey Derby.

“Mr. Farish didn’t try to lowball me; he gave me what he thought was a fair offer,” Diaz said. “But it was not acceptable.”

Would Farish have suggested the Preakness had he bought in?

“No, he wouldn’t have,” Diaz said. “He said he would have gone to the Jersey Derby, too.”

The Preakness lost another potential entrant Tuesday when it was announced that Skywalker had suffered a stress fracture in his lower left foreleg while finishing sixth in the Kentucky Derby and would not run in the Preakness.

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