Look Who’s Trying to Win That Big One

The Kentucky Derby, year in and year out, is not the greatest horse race you will ever see. To be honest, it ranks somewhere between a claimer at Caliente and a fox hunt in England as a bona fide test of horseflesh.

Trainers hate it. Jockeys curse it. But owners bask in it. The public loves it. They think it produces the world champion horse every year.

It doesn’t. Man o’ War never ran in it. Neither did Seabiscuit or John Henry. Native Dancer lost it. Donerail won it.

It’s been won by a 90-1 shot and lost by several 3-5 shots. It’s been won by some great trainers. It’s been won by some shady ones. It’s been won by some great jockeys. And it’s been lost by some greater ones.

It’s the wrong distance at the wrong time of the year on the wrong track. Only the place is right. Horses belong to Kentucky the way cows do to Texas.

Charlie Whittingham is one of the best trainers in the horse business, maybe the best. But he yields to nobody in his apathy toward the Kentucky Derby. It borders on wild-eyed indifference.

A lot of trainers bow out of bringing bad horses to Kentucky. Charlie balked at bringing good ones. He looked at that pile of rocks they called a track and looked at the size of the fields and explained that he would just as soon send his string down the Hollywood Freeway at rush hour, or into a burning building, as to Churchill Downs the first Saturday in May.

Most Hollywood owners panted to parade at Churchill Downs. It was the Palace. Broadway. Where the cameras were. Charlie told them to go without him.

He had gone a couple of times with the headstrong Liz Whitney, who thought every horse she owned was Man o’ War. Charlie finished eighth and ninth. Charlie doesn’t even like to finish eighth and ninth on a merry-go-round.

Charlie stayed in California and won a whole bunch of races that begin with San something-or-other. He won potfuls of money. Nobody could get a horse and a meeting ready at the same time any better than Charlie Whittingham. He came with the winner’s circle.

He has won something like 300 stakes. He has led the nation in money-won seven times. People have sent him horses from all over the world. Laconic to the point of taciturnity, he makes Gary Cooper look like a door-to-door salesman.

He sported a shaved pate in the days before Telly Savalas and Yul Brynner thought of it. He lost his scalp to jungle rot in the South Pacific, where he was a combat gyrene.

He learned how to train horses at the knee of Horatio Luro, the elegant gaucho who could train a burro to play Beethoven, if he had to, and they haven’t made the horse that Charlie Whittingham can’t move up several lengths.

The trouble with all that was, he couldn’t cash a check farther east than Pasadena. If you hit baseballs, you have to do it in a World Series. If you pass footballs, you have to do it in a Super Bowl. And if you train horses, you want to do it in a Kentucky Derby.

Charlie Whittingham is a conditioner of thoroughbreds in the great tradition of a Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons, who won three Kentucky Derbies; Plain Ben Jones, who won six, or even his mentor, Senor Luro, who won two. Charlie should be mentioned in the same breath with them, or certainly with contemporaries like Woody Stephens and Henry Forrest, who have won two apiece. He isn’t.

You would buttonhole Charlie Whittingham in a saddling area annually. “Got any Derby horses in the barn, Charlie?” you would ask.

“No. And neither does anyone else in here!” Charlie would growl.

He either had too much respect for the Kentucky Derby--or not enough. Either way, he went on winning stakes called the Cabrillo or the San Antonio, or the San Juan Capistrano. Not the kinds of races you made into an office pool.

The word went out: Charlie Whittingham was a whiz with older horses. He liked to condition seasoned stock. With younger horses? Well, where were the Derbies?

If Charlie resented it, he never let on. Charlie was never one to tip off his hole card in anything.

But, to the fraternity’s surprise, Charlie Whittingham showed up at Churchill Downs this year with his first Derby entrant in 26 years. Which sent the railbirds scurrying to the past-performance charts to see what recommended a colt named Ferdinand to the canny Whittingham.

It was not immediately apparent. A big, growthy chestnut with a seemingly minor interest in the business at hand, Ferdinand didn’t remind anyone of Man o’ War--or even Run Dusty Run. The prevailing opinion was, Charlie Whittingham had refused to come across the country with better stock.

It was not as if a Hollywood and Vine disc jockey were entering the list just to parade rhinestone silks in a post parade. Whittingham’s well-bruited skepticism about the race, plus his own high standards, precluded summary dismissal. And Owner Howard Keck is hardly the party-throwing type who needs his picture in the rotogravure.

The jockey, Bill Shoemaker, is a Hall of Fame rider but, at 54, is 12 years older than the oldest winning Derby rider.

The press promptly wondered in print whether Charlie really thought he had a chance or just wanted to get some attention on the other side of the Tehachapis.

Then, Ferdinand, a picture of red-coated health, went out at Churchill and ripped a searing :58 3/5 for five-eighths of a mile on Wednesday, running down his stablemate, Hidden Light, in the process and snapping clocks from one end of the backstretch to the other.

“He likes the track,” Whittingham dead-panned, trying not to let the canary feathers show.

The guy who hung up the morning line was stubborn: You get 20-1 if you like Ferdinand, Whittingham and Shoemaker.

The public may not be so dismissive Saturday. The bettors may remember Charlie’s answer to, “Do you have any Kentucky Derby horses?”

“No. And neither does anyone else in here.”

Charlie may be here not because he has the best horse but because no one else does, either. He may wonder how long this has been going on.