Horse Racing : Pat Day Hopes to Be Riding the Right Horse at the Right Time--May 7

In trying to pick the winner of the 114th Kentucky Derby, Pat Day has no more inkling than anyone else.

The Derby is just five weeks away and Day, the only jockey other than Laffit Pincay to have won the Eclipse Award at least three times, is still shopping for the best horse to ride at Churchill Downs May 7.

Day will be riding Notebook for the first time Saturday in the Rebel Stakes at Oaklawn Park. On Tuesday, Day won a race at Oaklawn, enabling him to become the 19th jockey to reach the 4,000-win mark. On April 8, he will ride Forty Niner for the first time, in the $50,000 Lafayette Stakes at Keeneland, and the next day he’ll resume riding Ruhlmann, in the $500,000 Santa Anita Derby.

In five tries, Day has never won the Kentucky Derby. His best finish was fourth with Rampage in 1986. Last year, aboard the 2-1 favorite, Demons Begone, the 34-year-old jockey had to pull up his mount after half a mile when the colt began gushing blood from the nostrils.

“I’ve come to some conclusions about the Derby,” Day said. “In order to win it, you’ve got to be at the right place at the right time. And no matter how much strategy is used in placing horses in various prep races, the only horse you want to be riding is the the one who’s reached a peak on that first Saturday in May.”

Chris McCarron has earned about $320,000 riding Alysheba, the winner of last year’s Derby and this year’s Santa Anita Handicap. Day might have ridden Alysheba through all of those rich races if he hadn’t given up the call on the colt at about this time last year.

Day finished second aboard Alysheba in the 1986 Hollywood Futurity, then rode him to second- and fourth-place finishes at Santa Anita early in 1987.

“He looked like he was a problem child then,” Day said. “And he also looked like he had a bad case of second-itis (five seconds and only one win in nine starts). Just about the time I got off him, he was having his throat fixed and he became a different horse after that.”

Alysheba had an entrapped epiglottis freed by surgery a few days after Day had ridden him for the last time, a second-place finish in the San Felipe Handicap March 22.

Notebook, after winning four of five starts as a 2-year-old, has slipped into Alysheba’s early pattern, having run third twice and second once in three races at Gulfstream Park.

“He looks like a mediocre horse,” Day said. “But young horses are always capable of improving. There seems to be some doubt whether Forty Niner will be able to go the Derby distance of a mile and a quarter. But that’s a question about all the 3-year-olds at this time of the year.

“We’ll just have to see what Ruhlmann does at Santa Anita. After he ran that real fast race at Golden Gate, he bled when he ran so badly in the Florida Derby.”

Speaking of bleeders, Day has been reunited at Oaklawn Park with Demons Begone, who ran only one race after his tragic Kentucky Derby before returning to action as a 4-year-old this year.

“The first time back, he looked real good and won while running 1:09 2/5 (for six furlongs),” Day said. “Then he came back the other day (in the Razorback Handicap) against Lost Code and ran a very dull race. He was a hard-ridden third that day.”

Trainer Jack Van Berg is not tipping his hand on whether he’ll run Alysheba against Ferdinand again in the San Bernardino Handicap at Santa Anita April 17. If both Kentucky Derby winners run, the purse will grow from $250,000 to $530,000.

Van Berg’s other option is to run Alysheba in the $500,000 Oaklawn Handicap April 16. The weights for the San Bernardino will be announced by Tom Robbins, Santa Anita’s racing secretary, April 12. Ferdinand conceded a pound when Alysheba beat him by a half-length in the Santa Anita Handicap, and it may be that the rivals would run at equal weights in the San Bernardino.

Asked which way he’s leaning, Van Berg said: “I’ll wait until the weights come out. That’s my hole card.”

The Blue Grass Stakes, the last major prep for the Kentucky Derby, will offer a $250,000 purse--up $50,000 from last year--when it’s run at Keeneland April 28, but trainer Wayne Lukas still doesn’t think that’s enough.

“I told Ted Bassett (chairman of the board at Keeneland) that this is 1988,” Lukas said. “They’ve been concerned about not getting substantial fields in recent years, and the only way they’ll do that is make it a $500,000 race.

“If anybody can afford that kind of money, Keeneland can, with all the money they make on commissions from those rich horse sales. You make the Blue Grass a $500,000 race, and guys from all over the country will come to run, because if you win that big of a pot, it will automatically give the horse enough earnings to get in the Kentucky Derby.”

It is such a wide-open year for the Kentucky Derby that Santa Anita trainer Dick Mulhall is making this offer:

“Pick any 3-year-old, any horse you want,” Mulhall says. “I’ll give you 10-1 odds that he won’t win the Derby.”

Horse Racing Notes

Ray Bell Sr., whose family owns Flying Victor, says that if the colt runs first, second or third in the Santa Anita Derby, he’ll probably run in the Kentucky Derby. . . . Flying Victor is what’s known as a late foal, having been born in May of 1985. Late foals seldom win the Kentucky Derby, although Spend a Buck, first at Churchill Downs in 1985, and Pleasant Colony, the winner in 1981, were born in May, and War Admiral, who swept the Triple Crown in 1937, was a May foal.

Zoffany, a multiple stakes winner in California, was bred to 80 mares during his first season at stud in Australia and reportedly got 65 of them in foal. . . . When Zany Tactics, the record-breaking sprinter, died after a workout at Santa Anita recently, trainer Blake Heap said that the impact of the horse’s death didn’t hit him until he went home that afternoon. “Somebody had given me a bottle of good Kentucky bourbon at Christmastime,” Heap said. “I opened it and there wasn’t much left when I finished. I’d be happy if I ever got a horse just half as good as that one.”

According to the Daily Racing Form’s review of 1987, there were 38 races worth $500,000 or more during the year, and Pat Day rode 10 of the winners. No other jockey rode more than four winners. . . . Chilcoton Blaze didn’t get his picture on television and didn’t make any national headlines last year, but the 7-year-old gelding won 12 of 15 starts in Western Canada.

Dale Baird, a West Virginia trainer, won 241 races last year, second to Wayne Lukas’ 343. Baird’s horses earned $439,000, Lukas’ $17.5 million. . . . Super Diamond, the fragile 8-year-old gelding who has earned more than $1 million, is getting a long rest and probably won’t get back to the races until this fall.