TRIPLE CROWN RATINGS

REMARKS: The last deadline for nominating horses to this year’s Triple Crown races is next Monday, and the owners of Rare Brick and Fobby Forbes have already paid their $3,000 fees.

It would have only cost them $600 to nominate for the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes if they had paid by the first deadline on Jan. 15, but the owners waited to see what the horses would do.

Rare Brick, who began his career with three straight wins at Canterbury Downs near Minneapolis last year, has reeled off three more victories this year at Oaklawn Park--the latest an 11-length victory in the Southwest Stakes last Saturday.

Fobby Forbes hasn’t officially won a race in three starts this year, but many feel he’s the best 3-year-old campaigning in Maryland.

After a second in a minor stake at Laurel in February, Fobby Forbes won a division of the General George at Pimlico, but he was disqualified for interference and placed second. In his last start, the 1 1/16-mile Tesio Stakes, Fobby Forbes lost by a nose to Broad Brush after trailing by 3 1/2 lengths at the top of the stretch.

Fobby Forbes is owned by Bob Brennan, the operator of Garden State Park. A.J. Foyt, who won the Indianapolis 500 four times, owned Rare Brick outright until he sold a 50% interest in the colt for an undisclosed price to Josephine Abercrombie of Pin Oak Stud in Versailles, Ky., a couple of days before last Saturday’s race.

A.J. Foyt III, the owner’s son, trains Rare Brick. The family has been involved in horse racing for several years, but the only impact the elder Foyt has had at the Kentucky Derby was when he punched out a heckler from his car in the Churchill Downs parking lot a few years ago.

Rare Brick ran a mile in the Southwest in 1:36 1/5, breaking the stakes record by more than a second, but despite that time and his undefeated record, the colt’s ability to handle the 1-mile Derby distance is already being questioned.

Rare Brick’s sire, Rare Performer, was a Mr. Prospector colt who raced in California and Florida and never won at a distance of more than six furlongs.

Fobby Forbes, whose sire, Bold Forbes, won the Derby and the Belmont and finished third in the Preakness in 1976, wound up a Brennan horse for the wrong reason. Fobby Forbes’ dam, the Round Table mare named Plum Happy, had produced an earlier colt that Brennan liked and bought, so when Plum Happy was sent through a breeding-stock auction, Brennan also bought her for $80,000. She was in foal to Bold Forbes at the time.

The first Plum Happy foal of Brennan’s soon turned into a disaster, however, and after showing no ability was turned into a steeplechase horse. Brennan later sold Plum Happy for $45,000, so the net price on Fobby Forbes amounted to $35,000.

Rare Brick’s next start is scheduled to be the 1 1/16-mile Rebel Stakes March 29 at Oaklawn. He’ll be severely tested by Ketoh, winner of last year’s important Cowdin at Belmont Park and a convincing winner of Santa Anita’s Bolsa Chica Stakes in his 1986 debut Feb. 26.

Ketoh is trained by Wayne Lukas, who will have two starters, Big Play and the filly, Arewehavingfunyet, in Sunday’s San Felipe Handicap at Santa Anita, a prelude to the Santa Anita Derby on April 6.

Arewehavingfunyet won five stakes as a 2-year-old and ran against colts twice, losing by a neck to Tasso in the Del Mar Futurity, in which she finished 2 lengths ahead of Snow Chief, the early Kentucky Derby favorite.

TRIPLE CROWN RATINGS

Career Horse S 1 2 3 Earnings 1. Snow Chief 12 8 2 1 $1,444,040 2. Tasso 7 5 1 1 $761,534 3. Pillaster 4 3 1 0 $248,390 4. Ketoh 5 3 0 0 $173,550 5. Meadowlake 2 2 0 0 $293,580 6. Badger Land 10 3 2 0 $251,325 7. Variety Road 7 2 1 4 $135,575 8. Ferdinand 8 2 3 2 $265,900 9. Mogambo 9 3 1 4 $380,096 10. Rare Brick 6 6 0 0 $111,060