THE KENTUCKY DERBY : The Ballad of Snow Chief : Derby Favorite Surrounded by Win, Place and ‘Show Business’

He’s a Cinderella horse, headed for Kentucky. No one can smite this horse, he’s talented, not lucky. He’s one up on the big ones, from Florida to Anita. A 5- and 10-cent horse, he was sired just to beat them. Those are the opening lyrics from “The Ballad of Snow Chief,” a country-western song that’s been written in honor of the 3-year-old colt who will be the solid favorite in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby.

He was bred in California from a place across the tracks. His pedigree is nothing but he doesn’t know the fact. Snow Chief, they call him Snow Chief, the horse that is running for the roses. Bob White, who manages the Rochelle Motel and Convention Center in Long Beach for one of Snow Chief’s owners, said that he and Alan Fournier, who plays the keyboard in the motel’s lounge, wrote the song in about 20 minutes. That’s about the time it will take trainer Mel Stute to saddle Snow Chief and run him at Churchill Downs Saturday.

“Twenty minutes, huh?” said one reporter covering the Derby. “It actually took them that long to write this, did it?”

Sarcasm about “The Ballad of Snow Chief” aside, White believes that Ben Rochelle and Carl Grinstead, the 50-50 owners of the California-bred colt, will get about $20-million worth of free publicity from the song.

White, who has worked for Rochelle for 18 years, has sent out more than 100 tapes of the song, to every major race track in the country and to two radio stations in each city where those tracks are located. Country singer Eddie Arnold, a longtime friend of former vaudeville entertainer and movie dancer Rochelle, has also received a copy of the song, which is sung by Fournier.

They call his owners the Sunshine Boys, they’re happy as can be. Their pockets full of money, their smiles a thing to see. Ben Rochelle’s a dancer, Grinstead an engineer, And you know that there’s a heaven on earth, they’re grinnin’ from ear to ear. With the 75-year-old Rochelle not due here until today, Grinstead, 72, stood next to Snow Chief’s barn Wednesday and answered a question about being known as one of the Sunshine Boys, a nickname taken from the Neil Simon comedy that starred Walter Matthau and George Burns in the movie.

“Ben likes being called that,” Grinstead said. “Myself, I don’t like being compared to a movie star.”

Grinstead, from Chula Vista, bred Snow Chief by mating his undistinguished mare, Miss Snowflake, to Reflected Glory, who stands for a $2,000 stud fee at Rancho Jonata near Santa Barbara. Snow Chief has won 9 of 13 starts, is on a five-stake winning streak and has earned $1.7 million. Of 17 probable Derby starters, the next horse on the money list is Mogambo, who is far behind Snow Chief with $658,246.

Rochelle, who lives in Beverly Hills, bought half of Grinstead’s racing operation, which included Snow Chief and 19 other horses, for an undisclosed sum midway through 1984.

Mel Stute’s not a dancer or an engineer. But when it comes to horses, it’s all you can hear. He tells them how to win the race, he shows them where to start. And when they hit the circle, you know he’s done his part. Stute, Snow Chief’s 58-year-old trainer who was sixth with Bold n’ Rulling in 1980 in his only previous Derby appearance, isn’t concerned about what post position his colt draws today.

“I’m in a better position than a lot of trainers here,” Stute said. “Snow Chief can come off the pace or go to the front, so it’s not as crucial that he gets a good post.”

Alex Solis, Snow Chief’s 21-year-old jockey, has ridden in one Derby, finishing 11th with Current Hope in 1983. Four jockeys in this year’s race--Vincent (Jimbo) Bracciale on Broad Brush, Jose Santos on Pillaster, Keith Allen on Wise Times and Jesse Davidson on Southern Appeal--have never ridden in a Derby.

“Lack of Derby experience on Alex’s part shouldn’t be a factor,” Stute said. “This horse takes him right with him wherever he goes.”

So if you want to be rich and famous, just listen to my tale: It’s the story of the Sunshine Boys and a horse that couldn’t fail. A photo finish you don’t need, the winner you can trust. So see you there at Churchill Downs as the others bite his dust. Badger Land, who was beaten by Snow Chief three times and ran behind him a fourth time in a race neither horse won, will be the second choice in the morning line. After those two, there probably will be a big jump in the odds, with Broad Brush, the winner of the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct, likely to be the third choice.

Many observers see the 112th Derby as a two-horse race between Snow Chief and Badger Land. Mild support has been gathering for Bold Arrangement, the English horse, after his late-running third-place finish in the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland last week, but Stute wasn’t that impressed with Bold Arrangement’s race.

“He can’t have much of a chance, because this is only his second race on dirt,” Stute said. “It’s always possible, of course, that he’s a better horse than I think he is. It looked to me like he made his run from the five-sixteenths pole to the eighth pole, and then he hung a bit after that.”

Hanging in the Blue Grass portends trouble for a horse in the Derby, which is an eighth of a mile farther.

There may be as much competition for Snow Chief in the song-writing department as there is on the track. Only special horses, it seems, inspire composers.

Seattle Slew had a song written about him in 1977, and it remained on a jukebox in Esposito’s, a bar across the street from Belmont Park, long after the colt had swept the Triple Crown. A song about Canonero II, the Venezuelan colt who won the 1971 Derby, was played all day long by mariachi bands the afternoon he finished fourth and missed the Triple Crown in the Belmont Stakes.

Pearl Grinstead, Carl’s chatty wife, received a tape at her hotel here from Randy Johnson, a Tampa, Fla., songwriter who has also recently written songs about Spend a Buck, the 1985 Derby winner, and John Henry, the two-time Horse of the Year.

Someone played Johnson’s version of a Snow Chief song for Pearl Wednesday morning at Churchill Downs.

“I like the other version better,” she said.

And she likes her husband’s horse best of all.