Probable Derby Winner Will Be Lightly Raced : Now, There Doesn’t Seem to Be a Traditional Way to Prepare for Run for Roses

Bold Forbes won the 1976 Kentucky Derby after running six times in the four months before the race. None of this year’s leading contenders will have been as heavily raced going into the 113th Derby at Churchill Downs May 2.

Affirmed, en route to the Triple Crown, won the Derby in his 14th start. This year’s Derby winner probably will come from a group that hasn’t been nearly as active.

Gato Del Sol sprung a $44.40 upset in the 1982 Derby after finishing second at Keeneland in the Blue Grass Stakes just nine days before. There hasn’t been a Derby winner since then who ran in the Blue Grass, and this year’s Keeneland race is likely to keep that streak intact, since most of the leading horses will have already finished their preparation by then.

Sunny’s Halo, winner of the 1983 Derby, ran 11 times as a 2-year-old. Of the 422 horses that were made eligible to run in this year’s Derby, only six were that busy or busier during their 2-year-old seasons.

In the words of the philosopher, what does all this mean?

What it probably means is that there no longer are any traditional ways to win America’s most popular horse race. It used to be that the way to find a Derby winner was similar to the old Packard slogan--ask the man who trains one. But this year, most of the significant Derby trainers are going against the grain:

--Five of the top contenders--Temperate Sil, Masterful Advocate, Cryptoclearance, Talinum and Bet Twice--will be making their first starts in a month in the Derby. Such spacing between races worked for Temperate Sil’s trainer, Charlie Whittingham, when he won the Derby last year with Ferdinand, but that was the first Derby horse to win after a month off since Needles in 1956.

--Another favorite, Demons Begone, will try to use this Saturday’s Arkansas Derby as his final prep for Churchill Downs. Sunny’s Halo pulled off the Arkansas-Kentucky Derby double, but he’s the only horse from Oaklawn Park who ever did so.

--Capote, last year’s champion 2-year-old colt and one of the favorites in Saturday’s Wood Memorial at Aqueduct, is really trying to break new ground. His first--and only--start as a 3-year-old was a fourth-place finish in the Gotham here April 4.

The last horse to start that late and win the Derby was Middleground in 1950. But Max Hirsch, Middleground’s trainer, was able to cram in four races in the 25 days before the Derby, including the Wood and the Blue Grass, and the King Ranch colt went into the Derby with nine career starts. Capote will have only six, and there hasn’t been as lightly raced a horse who’s won the Derby since Seattle Slew in 1977.

“It’s very tough to win the Derby if you’re not running your horse by at least early March,” says Laz Barrera, who trained both Bold Forbes and Affirmed. Barrera has been back to Churchill Downs only once since, finishing 10th with Paris Prince in 1983. This year, one of Barrera’s top 3-year-olds, Qualify, died after emergency stomach surgery and Persevered has been slowed by injuries and is a possibility for the Preakness, the second leg of the Triple Crown, at Pimlico May 16.

Early March is exactly when Affirmed began his 3-year-old season, although Barrera would have preferred starting him sooner. It rained at Santa Anita for a month and the track was muddy for 18 of the first 19 days of the meeting.

When Affirmed got started, however, he established his superiority, winning four California races by 17 lengths. “By the time he got to Kentucky, I thought he had already established himself as the best of his generation,” Barrera said. “And since he had run over Eastern tracks as a 2-year-old, I wasn’t worried about how he might handle Churchill Downs.”

Angel Cordero rode Bold Forbes to his Derby win, but Barrera credits Laffit Pincay for the move that made the difference. Bold Forbes won only one of four Santa Anita starts under Pincay, who then told Barrera:

“This horse doesn’t like the track here. I think he’d be a better horse if you ran him someplace else.”

So in early March, Barrera shipped Bold Forbes to Aqueduct, where he won the Bay Shore and the Wood, getting the right foundation for Kentucky.

Eddie Gregson, who trained Gato Del Sol in 1982 and who has a problematical Derby starter this year in Candi’s Gold, says that four starts as a 3-year-old is an ideal schedule for a Derby hopeful.

That’s what Gato Del Sol had--none of them wins, by the way--going into his Derby, but Gregson admits that circumstances may have contributed.

“A month after the Hollywood Futurity he got sick,” Gregson said. “Fortunately, he was well campaigned at 2 (8 starts). What you need to win the Derby is a horse with the right amount of racing at 2, the right amount at 3, a sound horse and a legitimate pace to run at in the race.”

Later in the interview, Gregson remembered a fifth ingredient.

“You’ve got to have a horse that can handle that crowd of 135,000,” he said. “There’s no way to describe what a horse goes through on Derby day.

“You can’t school a horse to handle a crowd like that, because there’s not another day at the track like it. When the horse comes walking the wrong way, from the barn around the track to the paddock, there are hundreds of people just screaming their lungs out at him.

“But I had the kind of horse that wasn’t bothered by anything. You could have shot off a cannon over Gato’s head and he wouldn’t have done anything.”

As a 2-year-old, Sunny’s Halo was well traveled. His season started in Canada, and before trainer Dave Cross brought him to Hollywood Park for the winter, he had run in New York, Maryland and New Jersey.

By the time Sunny’s Halo made his 11th start, his legs were marginal. He was going to run in the Young America Stakes at the Meadowlands, and although Bill Shoemaker was interested in riding him, Cross told the jockey to stay in California.

“Shoe was my idol,” Cross said. “I thought too much of him to have him come all the way to New Jersey to ride a 30-1 shot.”

Sunny’s Halo finished sixth in the Young America, but when Cross put him on a plane for California the next day, he still had Derby dreams.

“I could never have done it if I hadn’t gotten rid of the other 35 horses I had,” Cross said. “This horse got all my attention.”

Similar to what Capote is attempting this year, Sunny’s Halo didn’t make his first 1983 start until March 26, winning the Rebel Handicap at Oaklawn. He ran to an easy victory in the Arkansas Derby three weeks later.

Still, Cross was on a tight, catch-up schedule. The Sunday morning before the Kentucky Derby, torrential rains hit Churchill Downs.

“Before it rained, though, I was able to get in the mile work that the horse needed,” Cross said. “When he got that, I went over in the corner and threw up for five minutes. Every day meant something and if we had missed that work, we would have been in trouble.”

When Derby day arrived, Cross reeked with confidence. After about 50 minutes in the paddock just before the race, his confidence grew.

“Because of the crowd, I saw 10 horses dissolve in front of me,” Cross said. “They were totally gone. Sunny’s Halo was such a cinch that Mickey Mouse could have ridden him and won.”

Actually, the rider was Eddie Delahoussaye.

If there is a recent Derby winner that fits the pattern many prominent trainers are following this year, it is Pleasant Colony, who was first at Churchill Downs in 1981.

Pleasant Colony ran five times in 1980, getting a rest from early November until he returned to the races in Florida in mid-February. He ran twice at Gulfstream Park, then won the Wood and made the Derby his ninth lifetime start.

Johnny Campo didn’t start training Pleasant Colony until a month before the Wood, replacing Donald Lee.

“If you respect a horse, six times tops is enough races for him as a 2-year-old,” Campo said Wednesday at Belmont Park, where he’s preparing the longshot Pleasant Variety, a son of Pleasant Colony, for this Saturday’s Wood.

“A good horse, you only want to run him every six or seven weeks. So three races are about right for a 3-year-old going into the Derby.”

Demons Begone and Temperate Sil will each have those three races going into this year’s Derby. There’s much to be said for the Pleasant Colony formula. He wound up winning the Preakness, too.

Trainer Lynn Whiting said Monday that J.T.’s Pet was injured in Saturday’s Lexington States at Keeneland, Ky., and probably will not run in the Kentucky Derby.

“I can’t really see any chance for (running in the Derby),” Whiting said from Hot Springs, Ark. “We aren’t making any plans right now. The horse is lame.”