THE KENTUCKY DERBY : Rampage Has the Rooster, but Few Others Like His Chances in Derby

Not many people are picking Rampage to win Saturday’s Kentucky Derby, even though the 3-year-old colt won the Arkansas Derby April 19 in the second-fastest running of the race.

But the Louisville rooster has picked Rampage to win at Churchill Downs, and nobody scoffs at the rooster anymore. He has picked the last three winners of the Derby--Sunny’s Halo, Swale and Spend a Buck--and not even the best handicappers in the country have done that well.

Here’s the way the rooster does it: His owner lines up cages with all of the Derby horses’ names on them. The cage that the rooster enters is considered to be his Derby pick.

Mike Battaglia, the Churchill Downs oddsmaker, doesn’t share the rooster’s opinion. He has made Rampage a 20-1 shot, although the colt will likely go off much lower because he’s being ridden by Pat Day, who is so familiar with this track that he could ride it at midnight.

Around the barn, Rampage’s handlers call him Rambo.

Gary Thomas, the former rodeo bronco rider who trains Rambo, says the nickname is justified. “He’s an ornery horse,” Thomas said. “He’ll bite and kick you if you give him the chance. He’s never got me, but he’s nailed some of the others.”

All week, Rampage has been quietly grazing in a small field across the road from his barn.

“He’s better than he used to be,” Thomas said. “When he was a 2-year-old, we wouldn’t have been able to do that with him.”

It was Thomas who helped pick Rampage out of an Arkansas yearling auction. The colt’s owners, John and Nancy Reed of Memphis, paid $18,000, a bargain price. Rampage’s sire, the Northern Dancer colt Northern Baby, was standing for a $75,000 stud fee at the time.

Rampage’s funny-looking right hind foot was largely responsible for his low price. He wears a corrective shoe that is designed to make the foot grow out more normally.

“I didn’t think he looked that bad,” Thomas said. “I sure thought he’d make it to the races, but it’s surprised me that he’s made it to the Derby.”

Rampage made the first two starts of his life on the Derby track, finishing second twice here last November in allowance races.

In his next race, the Hawthorne Juvenile in December, he finished sixth, the only time he has been worse than fourth in eight starts. Rampage drew the inside post position in the Hawthorne, got trapped by the horses outside him from the start, and never did get a chance to run.

Rampage’s only four starts as a 3-year-old have been at Oaklawn Park, where he won two allowance races, finished fourth in the Rebel Stakes and then beat Wheatly Hall by 1 1/2 lengths in the Arkansas Derby.

Wheatly Hall, who is 30-1 Saturday, is trained by Jack Van Berg, for whom Thomas once worked as an assistant trainer. “Jack was a hell of a horseman,” Thomas said.

Both Jack Van Berg and his father, Marion, are in the racing Hall of Fame, and Thomas applies one of Marion Van Berg’s axioms to Rampage: “Just worry about the front of the horse; the hind end will follow.”

Thomas, 44, said he went broke rodeoing. “I wasn’t all that good, that’s the reason I was broke,” he said. Thomas gravitated to Turf Paradise in Arizona, doing everything around the track’s backside until he started working for Van Berg in 1969.

Thomas saddled two stakes winners--Drop Your Drawers and Lucky Lady Ellen--before Rampage.

“My colt (Rampage) ran a legitimate race in the Arkansas Derby,” Thomas said. “He’s a legitimate come-from-behind horse who likes to lay just off the pace. What I’m hoping for Saturday is that he gets away good and clean, doesn’t run into any traffic problems and then comes running.”

After the Reeds bought Rampage, one of the underbidders at the sale offered to buy him, but they declined.

Early this week on the backside at Churchill Downs, Nancy Reed showed up wearing a Memphis State jacket. She said she was ignored by the media.

“I finally figured that it was the jacket,” Reed said. “This is University of Louisville (the national basketball champion) country.”

Since then, Reed has been wearing a red jacket--red is the color of the Louisville Cardinals--and interviews have followed.

Sunny’s Halo is the only Arkansas Derby winner who has gone on to win the Kentucky Derby. If Rampage should win Saturday, Nancy Reed will be able wear anything she wants to the victory party.