TRIPLE CROWN RATINGS

REMARKS: Only a few weeks ago, trainer Woody Stephens was talking about the success he has had with jockey Eddie Maple.

“I’ll bet Eddie’s won 200 stakes races for me over the years,” Stephens said.

But Stephens said Monday that he fired Maple and replaced him with Pat Day as the rider for Forty Niner.

Seth Hancock, whose Claiborne Farm bred and races Forty Niner, called Stephens and told him to make the change.

“Seth said that he had no complaints about the way Eddie was riding the colt, it’s just that he wanted Day if he was available,” Stephens said.

Maple has ridden Forty Niner in all nine of his starts, including four stakes wins last year that led to the Eclipse Award as champion 2-year-old colt. This year, Forty Niner has won one of three starts, losing the other two by a length and a neck. Forty Niner’s next race is scheduled to be the Lafayette Stakes at Keeneland on April 8, a month before the Kentucky Derby, and it’s an interesting spot, since Stephens is shortening the horse’s distance to seven furlongs from the 1 1/8 miles that he ran in finishing second to Brian’s Time in the Florida Derby.

Although Day has won only one Triple Crown race--the Preakness with Tank’s Prospect in 1985--he is considered one of the best jockeys in the country and has won the Eclipse Award three of the last four years.

Having lost the mount on Forty Niner, Maple can concentrate on Cefis, another of Stephens’ Kentucky Derby hopefuls. Cefis won the first stakes race of his career Sunday, beating a weak field in the Tampa Bay Derby.

Cefis, whose name comes from Stephens’ middle name, won by a half-length despite a miserable trip in the 1 1/16-mile race. The son of Caveat, who won the Belmont Stakes for Stephens in 1983, was jostled at the start, fell 22 lengths behind the leader after a half-mile and was still seven lengths back with an eighth of a mile to go.

“I always thought this horse would do better when the distances got longer,” Stephens said.

The Times’ panelists were not impressed enough to move Cefis into the top 10. He’s won only 3 of 13 starts, and they’d like to see what he does against classier opposition, and that time will come April 2 when he meets Brian’s Time and Stalwars in the Jim Beam at Turfway Park near Cincinnati.

The horse who made the biggest move in the standings was Mi Preferido, the convincing 2 3/4-length winner in Santa Anita’s San Felipe Handicap at 1 1/16 miles.

Trainer Laz Barrera reported Monday that there was only “a little tenderness” in the horse’s mouth. Mi Preferido cut himself badly while finishing fifth in the San Rafael at Santa Anita on Feb. 27.

“I’ve never lost my confidence in this horse,” Barrera said. “I knew he was a good horse. There was still some soreness going into this race, and there wasn’t time to wait for him to heal completely. He was drifting out through the stretch, and that might have been because of the mouth.”

Lively One, the 4-5 favorite who was a well-beaten fourth in the San Felipe, needs a win over Mi Preferido in their April 9 rematch in the $500,000 Santa Anita Derby to regain prestige and to accumulate enough earnings should Churchill Downs have to invoke the money rule for the Kentucky Derby.

In the event that the prospective field exceeds 20, the number of runners is decided by most money earned in important races. Despite Lively One’s reputation before the San Felipe--the Las Vegas Sun’s Pat Rogerson had him ranked just behind Forty Niner on his Derby line--he had run in only one stake, a minor race at Santa Anita. The only purse money of Lively One’s that counts for Churchill Downs’ purposes is the $11,250 that he earned for fourth place Sunday.

Since Churchill Downs installed a money rule in 1975, capacity fields have been entered four times. There’s been no over-crowding by Derby horsemen since 1984, but this year smacks of a stampede for the entry box. Too many horses have been winning too many of the Derby preps for anything else to happen.

Advisory panel for The Times’ Triple Crown Ratings: Lenny Hale, vice president for racing at Aqueduct, Belmont Park and Saratoga; Frank (Jimmy) Kilroe, vice president for racing at Santa Anita; and Tommy Trotter, racing secretary at Gulfstream Park.

Career Horse S 1 2 3 Earnings 1. Forty Niner 9 6 2 0 $854,444 2. Brian’s Time 6 3 1 0 341,619 3. Cherokee Colony 7 2 3 0 302,200 4. Seeking the Gold 4 4 0 0 62,100 5. Regal Classic 8 4 3 1 812,500 6. Mi Preferido 5 4 0 0 231,675 7. Stalwars 5 2 2 1 86,450 8. Private Terms 5 5 0 0 201,428 9. Lively One 6 3 1 1 102,850 10. Winning Colors 5 4 1 0 195,150