Florida Derby : For Campo, Like Father Like Son?

The horse looks good, and so does the trainer.

The horse is Cherokee Colony, a rangy, headstrong son of Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Pleasant Colony, who will try adding to his credentials today against nine opponents in the $500,000 Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park.

The trainer is blunt-talking Johnny Campo, no longer Mr. Five by Five, now that he has lost maybe 40 pounds off what was once a squat 250-pound frame.

“I’m trying to look like you guys,” Campo said to a reporter during a visit in the Gulfstream paddock earlier this week.

Campo hopes that Cherokee Colony continues to look like Pleasant Colony, the colt who gave him the first two legs of the Triple Crown--and then ran third in the Belmont--in 1981.

Pleasant Colony might have won races, but he would have finished last in a beauty contest. He developed a skin infection during his 3-year-old season and went from track to track displaying an ugly rash on his hind quarters.

“This colt (Cherokee Colony) is better made and has better (running) action than his dad,” Campo said.

Compared to most of the horses running in the 1 1/8-mile Florida Derby, Cherokee Colony has had a light campaign. He ran five times as a 2-year-old, winning only once and finishing second to Firery Ensign in the Young America Stakes at the Meadowlands in his final 1987 appearance.

In his only race this year, Cherokee Colony was a late-running winner, by a length, over Sorry About That in the Flamingo at Hialeah Jan. 2. Sorry About That, who had been undefeated before the Flamingo, is also running in the Florida Derby.

“It was 62 days between races when this horse ran in the Flamingo, and it’s another 62 days when he runs Saturday,” Campo said. “If a horse can train well, like this one does, then there’s no reason to run him every two weeks.”

Cherokee Colony is scheduled to make only one more start, in the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct April 23, before he tries to give Campo his second Kentucky Derby victory May 7 at Churchill Downs. Campo came close to winning an earlier Derby when his Jim French ran second, 3 lengths behind the surprising Canonero II, in 1971.

Cherokee Colony’s road to the Derby is similar to Pleasant Colony’s. Under another trainer, O’Donnell Lee, Pleasant Colony began his 3-year-old season in Florida, finishing second in the Fountain of Youth at Gulfstream and running fifth in the Florida Derby.

Thomas Mellon Evans, who bred and owned Pleasant Colony, then turned the colt over to Campo, his New York trainer, and a month later Pleasant Colony won the Wood before going on to Kentucky. The connections on Cherokee Colony are the same right down the line, Evans having also bred this horse, Campo doing the training and Jorge Velasquez doing the riding.

Velasquez didn’t ride Cherokee Colony until the Flamingo, Jacinto Vasquez and Richard Migliore having been in the saddle for his previous races. Campo says that Evans wanted to switch to Velasquez, and there have been reports that Angel Cordero was approached first but declined the mount.

Cherokee Colony hadn’t seen Gulfstream Park until Friday, when he was vanned here from Calder Race Course--about a 15-minute ride. Campo, a New York-based trainer, stables his horses at Calder when he runs at the Florida tracks.

“Calder’s got a training track that’s nine-sixteenths of a mile,” Campo said. “You can get a horse fit with less work at Calder than, say, Hialeah.”

At Calder, Cherokee Colony’s stall is right next to Campo’s barn office. The other morning, the trainer ventured into the stall with a couple of other handlers to get a close look at his strapping specimen.

“This horse doesn’t like me, so watch out,” Campo said. “He looks like he’s calm, but he’s not. He’s all horse, and he’s a real handful.”

Cherokee Colony came along when Campo’s barn needed a morale boost. Two years ago, a barn fire in the middle of the night at Belmont Park killed 30 head--every horse he had in training at the time.

“I don’t like to talk about it anymore,” Campo said. “I’ve talked about it enough already. It was like an athlete breaking his leg a couple of months before the Olympics and then putting himself back together in time to compete. If you didn’t have the drive to come back from something like that, it could put you way down. But I had the drive to do it.”

Campo first believed that Cherokee Colony might be an achiever when the horse won in an allowance race at the Meadowlands and finished second in the Young America two weeks later. Before those starts, he had been fourth once and second twice in races at New York tracks.

“If a horse can run good at the Meadowlands, he’s going to be a good horse,” Campo said. “The Meadowlands is the funniest track in the world. Horses either like it or they don’t, and when this horse did good there, I knew he was going to be something.”

Campo believes that Ruhlmann, the invader from California, is the horse to beat in the Florida Derby. Ruhlmann’s style should be a factor as far as the pace goes, while Cherokee Colony is likely to be one of the closers through the stretch. In the Flamingo, Cherokee Colony was far back early, trailing by seven lengths going down the backstretch.

Bobby Frankel, Ruhlmann’s trainer, should feel flattered to get a pre-race compliment from Campo, who seldom has kind words for the opposition. A few years ago, Campo characterized another trainer’s promising 3-year-old as “(having) a heart the size of a pea.”

About Cougarized, a colt running in New York, Campo says, “He’s nothin’.” Although Cefis, who is not running in the Florida Derby, finished third in the Flamingo, Campo called him “a bum.”

Horse Racing Notes

The Florida Derby field, in post-position order, consists of Twice Too Many, Sorry About That, Ruhlmann, Brian’s Time, Frosty the Snowman, Buoy, Evening Kris, Notebook, Forty Niner and Cherokee Colony. . . . The first three morning-line choices are Forty Niner at 2-1, Ruhlmann at 3-1 and Cherokee Colony at 5-1. . . . Florida Derby day is more than just an important race at Gulfstream. Long before the stake is run, there will be such attractions as a flying circus, jousting knights and a one-furlong race for three African hippopotamuses.

In another stake for 3-year-olds on today’s program, Seeking the Gold, the Mr. Prospector colt who is undefeated in three starts, heads a seven-horse field in the Swale. Perfect Spy, who beat Forty Niner in the Hutcheson at Gulfstream Feb. 3, is also entered in the seven-furlong race. . . . Lost Code, who won four derbies and earned $1 million last year, makes his debut as a 4-year-old today, running in an allowance race at Gulfstream.

Lordalik, one of five horses that trainer Bobby Frankel shipped to Gulfstream from Santa Anita, won the first division of Friday’s Fort Lauderdale Handicap by a length over Satiapour and paid $14.20. Lordalik is owned by Frankel and Jerry and Ann Moss. The Mosses also own Ruhlmann. . . . Favored Lockton finished third, under Angel Cordero. Randy Romero, who rode Lordalik, also won the second division of the Fort Lauderdale, scoring a 3/4-length victory with King’s River II over favored San’s the Shadow. King’s River II paid $8.60. . . . The weather today is expected to be partly cloudy with no rain and the temperature near 80.