Belmont Stakes : Ferdinand Is a 9-5 Favorite Today, but He’s Not Considered a Shoo-in

Pat Day, who will ride Rampage in today’s 118th running of the Belmont Stakes, says that Ferdinand was lucky to win the Kentucky Derby.

Woody Stephens, trying for his fifth straight Belmont victory with Danzig Connection, says that he wouldn’t be surprised if Ferdinand lost. “He could have got beat in the Derby, if Pat Day’s horse hadn’t got stopped at the quarter pole,” he said.

People seem to be forgetting that Ferdinand didn’t exactly have a rocking-chair trip in the Derby himself. But Day and Stephens aren’t the only Ferdinand knockers as a field of 10 horses prepares to line up for the Belmont, a race that could be run on an off track because of rain Friday and possibly more today.

Mud would give Ferdinand’s detractors more ammunition. The Nijinsky II chestnut has never run on an off track in 11 starts, but he ran third in the Santa Anita Derby, and trainer Charlie Whittingham thought that the slick condition of the surface might have contributed to his poor performance. Ferdinand also was not entered in the San Felipe Handicap at Santa Anita because of an off track.

The New York Post had 14 selectors handicapping the Belmont in Friday’s editions, and only one picked Ferdinand to win. It’s as though the Derby winner took a drubbing in the Preakness instead of running a strong second behind Snow Chief.

Still, Ferdinand will probably go off the favorite. He’s 9-5 in the morning line, followed by Mogambo at 4-1 and Rampage at 9-2. The field, in post-position order, consists of Fobby Forbes, Bordeaux Bob, Parade Marshal, Mogambo, Personal Flag, Johns Treasure, Ferdinand, Danzig Connection, Imperious Spirit and Rampage.

Whittingham, a racing Hall of Fame member who waited until he was 73 to win his first Derby, has started only one previous horse in the Belmont, finishing ninth with Porterhouse in 1954. Friday morning, staying inside Barn 5 at Belmont Park to avoid the rain, Whittingham indicated that he probably wouldn’t scratch Ferdinand, no matter how much it rained.

“This track dries quickly,” Whittingham said. “If the horse likes the mud, that’ll be fine, but if he doesn’t, there’s nothing we can do about it. We’ll just have to go back to the drawing board. Maybe we’ll put him on the lead if it rains. Everybody’s worried about who’s going to the front, and that would solve that problem.”

Bill Shoemaker, who won his fourth Derby at 54, will be on Ferdinand, trying to win his sixth Belmont, which would tie the record shared by Eddie Arcaro and James McLaughlin.

The Belmont has been Shoemaker’s best Triple Crown race. He is 4 for 24 in the Derby and 2 for 11 in the Preakness, but in the Belmont he is 5 for 10, having last won with Avatar in 1975. He also won with Gallant Man, Sword Dancer, Jaipur and Damascus.

Whittingham was unhappy with Ferdinand’s second workout here after the Preakness, a mile in the snailish time of 1:43 1/5 a week ago. Ferdinand finished well that morning, but it irked the trainer that the rider on another horse, working in company with Elizabeth and Howard Keck’s colt, didn’t set a faster early pace than he did.

On Tuesday, Ferdinand worked five-eighths of a mile in a sharp :58 2/5, galloping out an extra furlong in 1:12 1/5, a performance that had Whittingham smiling again.

Still, Ferdinand, who will be the only horse to run in all three Triple Crown races this year, is characterized by Day as practically a fluky winner of the Derby.

“He was lucky, and my horse (Rampage) was unlucky,” Day said. “We didn’t have the smoothest of trips. I think I’ve got the winner on Saturday.”

The negative concerning Rampage is that he hasn’t had a race since the Derby, which was five weeks ago, and it’s been at least 50 years since a horse won the Belmont after such a long layoff.

Rampage, who spent most of his post-Derby time at Canterbury Downs near Minneapolis, was out for several good reasons: There was heat in one leg after the Derby; he wasn’t eating well; there was a problem with his blood count, and he developed a skin disease that discolored part of his coat.

At Belmont Thursday, Day got on Rampage for the first time since the Derby--the Arkansas Derby winner worked a half-mile in :48 3/5--and commented that rumors of this horse’s deterioration had been greatly exaggerated.

“I had questions about him myself before I worked the horse,” Day said. “But the skin disease has cleared up, his coat is shiny again, his eyes are bright and his mental attitude is good. I told the trainer (Gary Thomas) before they took the saddle off him in the Derby that he’d win the Belmont, and I still feel that way.”

Shoemaker fears Rampage, but Whittingham doesn’t list him as the horse to beat. “It might be Woody’s horse (Danzig Connection), or maybe one of those New York horses,” Whittingham said.

The New York horses include Personal Flag, winner of three straight and two at Belmont but untested in stakes competition; Johns Treasure, impressive in an allowance race here two weeks ago but trying to go 1 1/2 miles with only four races to his credit, and Mogambo, who dropped to a 10th-place finish in the Kentucky Derby between second-place runs in the Wood Memorial and the Jersey Derby.

“Anybody but Walter Kelley, and I’d say that four races going into the Belmont isn’t enough,” said Stephens, referring to Johns Treasure’s trainer. “But Kelley, he knows what he’s doing and wouldn’t be here if he didn’t think he had a chance.”

Besides a questionable amount of seasoning, Johns Treasure also runs with a corrective bar shoe that keeps a problem foot from being abused by hitting the track, and horses aren’t known to run well in the mud with such a shoe.

“You saw what happened to (trainer Wayne) Lukas’ horse last year with a bar shoe,” Stephens said. In the 1985 Belmont, which was run on a muddy track, Preakness winner Tank’s Prospect went lame and never ran again.

The only time Danzig Connection ran on an off track, last August at Belmont, he finished third, 12 lengths behind, as the 9-10 favorite.

“This horse has galloped good in the mud since then,” Stephens said. “His second dam was by Prince John, who could handle the mud. I don’t know if an off track will help or not. If it keeps raining, I’ll be kind of coming into this race in the dark.”

A horse Stephens would like to have for this year’s Belmont is Creme Fraiche, the gelding who gave the 72-year-old trainer his fourth straight win in the stake last year. Creme Fraiche loves the mud and in fact is running at Belmont today. Stephens only wishes that it was in the eighth race instead of the second.

Horse Racing Notes

Besides the Belmont, there are seven other stakes on today’s nine-race program, with total purses exceeding $1 million. . . . If all 10 horses start in the Belmont, the winner will get $338,640 out of the $564,400 purse. . . . Woody Stephens said that when Chris McCarron rides Danzig Connection, it will be the first time the jockey has been on one of his horses. . . . Glow, one of Stephens’ promising 3-year-olds earlier this year, has been sold by Claiborne Farm to Sonja Rogers of Ireland for a reported $1.6 million. Glow, a son of Northern Dancer, will continue to run for Stephens the rest of this year and then will go to stud in Ireland. . . . For tax reasons, the Glow deal was closed in Delaware. Glow had to be shipped from Belmont Park to Delaware Park in order for the parties to derive the tax benefits available there. . . . Several of the Belmont horses have run good races on off tracks--Rampage, Parade Marshal, Fobby Forbes and Personal Flag. . . . Not surprisingly, Belmont Park is not interested in Bob Brennan’s “Grand Slam” proposal. Brennan, who operates Garden State Park, has suggested that his Jersey Derby be incorporated into a four-race series with the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont, eliminating the Triple Crown. . . . Ogygian, a top 3-year-old in the midst of a comeback from knee surgery, was scratched from Friday’s Nassau County Handicap at Belmont. The colt may run today in the $75,000 Riva Ridge Stake, the race before the Belmont. . . . The winner of the Nassau County was Roo Art, who was ridden by Bill Shoemaker and paid $13.80 to win for a 2 1/2-length victory over Another Reef. Favored Proud Truth finished fourth.

THE BELMONT FIELD

PP HORSE JOCKEY ODDS 1 Fobby Forbes Vince Bracciale 15-1 2 Bordeaux Bob Eddie Maple 30-1 3 Parade Marshal Jerry Bailey 20-1 4 Mogambo Jose Santos 4-1 5 Personal Flag Jorge Velasquez 10-1 6 Johns Treasure Laffit Pincay 6-1 7 Ferdinand Bill Shoemaker 9-5 8 Danzig Connection Chris McCarron 6-1 9 Imperious Spirit Ruben Hernandez 30-1 10 Rampage Pat Day 9-2

Owners by post position--1. Due Process Stable. 2. Marc Barge. 3. Greentree Stable. 4. Peter Brant. 5. Ogden Phipps. 6. John R. Murrell. 7. Elizabeth Keck. 8. Henryk de Kwiatkowski. 9. Don Mangano. 10. John and Nancy Reed.

Trainers by post position--1. Carlos Garcia. 2. Woody Sedlacek. 3. Bob Reinacher. 4. LeRoy Jolley. 5. Claude McGaughey. 6. Walter Kelley. 7. Charlie Whittingham. 8. Woody Stephens. 9. Kenneth Jumps. 10. Gary Thomas.

Weights--All carry 126 pounds. Gross value--$564,400 with 10 starters. Value to winner--$338,640. Second--$124,168. Third--$67,728. Fourth--$33,864. Post time--2:40 p.m. PDT. Television -- Channel 7.