THE KENTUCKY DERBY : ROSE-COLORED : Lukas Puts His Usual High Hopes on California Filly, Winning Colors

Barns 37 and 39 face one another on the backstretch at Churchill Downs.

This gives Winning Colors, the skyscraper filly, and Private Terms, the big, black colt, the opportunity to look at each other almost 24 hours a day.

The two 3-year-olds might also be seeing a lot of each other through the tiring stretch here Saturday, when Churchill Downs runs the Kentucky Derby for the 114th time.

Winning Colors is the speed horse in the 1-mile race. Private Terms is a middle-of-the-pack type who figures to be trying to catch her at the end.

After entries were drawn Thursday for the 17-horse race, undefeated Private Terms, who has won seven times in Maryland and New York, was made a 5-2 favorite, and once-beaten Winning Colors, who has done most of her running in California, was listed as the 3-1 second choice.

Fillies seldom win the Derby--Regret did it in 1915 and Genuine Risk won here in 1980 but 32 others have failed--and Wayne Lukas, who trains Winning Colors, never wins the roses. He has been no better than third with 12 starters in the last 7 years.

But Lukas was saying on April 10, the day after Winning Colors won the Santa Anita Derby by 7 1/2 lengths, that this oversized filly with the salt-and-pepper coat would give him his best chance at Churchill Downs, and this week he’s still saying it.

Lukas has been known to gang up on his Derby rivals with multiple entries, having started three horses twice and a pair on another occasion, but Winning Colors is his only shot Saturday, even though he had four or five other candidates until last week.

“She’s the best 3-year-old I’ve got,” Lukas said. “She’s head and shoulders above the others in my barn.”

Lukas also believes that this year’s Derby would have been bland but for the speculation on his filly. “There was no Mike Tyson in this Derby,” Lukas said. “The filly is the Tyson of the field.”

While Lukas’ unbridled enthusiasm for Winning Colors is understandable, several Derby trainers believe that her Santa Anita Derby win should be a race with an asterisk.

Said one, John Veitch, the trainer of the late-running Brian’s Time: “I can’t imagine everybody letting her run off alone on Saturday, the way she did in California.”

The Santa Anita Derby might be suspect for another reason. Hardly any of the horses that trailed Winning Colors that day went on to bigger and better things. But even if you discount Winning Colors’ performance by, say, 30%, it was still a gangbusters race.

“I don’t pay much attention to these chart guys,” Lukas said. “But they tell me that if you insert what she did at Santa Anita into the running of the Wood Memorial, theoretically she would have dynamite figures.”

Private Terms won the Wood in a time that almost broke Aqueduct’s track record, against a field that was much saltier than the Santa Anita Derby’s.

The thinking used to be that California horses ran into a stacked deck here, because they were too accustomed to running on hard surfaces back home. But Gato Del Sol in 1982 and Ferdinand and Alysheba the last two years have been California-based horses that weren’t affected by the sandier surface at Churchill Downs.

“The best horse doesn’t always win the Derby,” Lukas said. “It’s the horse who’s right on the right day. Muttering (fifth in 1982) must have beaten Gato Del Sol five times in California before the Derby.”

Gene Klein bought Winning Colors, the daughter of Caro and All Rainbows, for $575,000 at a Keeneland yearling auction.

“I remember the first time I saw her.” said Rogers Beasley, the director of Keeneland’s sales. “This wasn’t a filly that grew after she was a yearling. She was big from the beginning.”

At Saratoga last summer, Winning Colors raced for the first time and won by 2 1/2 lengths, beating Epitome, who by the end of the year was voted the 2-year-old filly champion. That title might have gone to Epitome because Winning Colors was kept on the sidelines in the Breeders’ Cup.

But when Jeff Lukas, Wayne’s son, told his father from Saratoga how promising Winning Colors was, they decided on a light 2-year-old campaign with the Kentucky Derby already in mind. With this horse, Wayne Lukas was trying a different tack, having been criticized for over-racing and under-preparing some of his other Derby candidates.

“You can’t imagine how tempting it was to run her in the Breeders’ Cup,” he said. “But we had a lot of other fillies that could run and decided to red-shirt her.”

Lukas started five horses in the Juvenile Fillies at Hollywood Park, none of which finished higher than third.

Returning to the races in December, Winning Colors has run her last five races at Santa Anita. She won at 6 furlongs and a mile, lost by a neck to Goodbye Halo at a mile, gained revenge in an 8-length win in the 1 1/16-mile Santa Anita Oaks, then took on and beat colts for the first time in the 1 1/8-mile Santa Anita Derby.

Lukas likes to run fillies against colts and has won several stakes that way, among them the Arkansas Derby with Althea in 1984. His fillies were a disaster here that year, though, Althea beating just one horse and Life’s Magic running eighth.

Winning Colors, however, is a physically stronger horse than Althea and has a better chance Saturday, in Lukas’ opinion, because she’s had a month off. Althea ran here after only a two-week breather.

Because there’s an allowance for fillies in the Derby, Winning Colors will carry 121 pounds, 5 less than the other starters.

“A lot of handicappers are overlooking that but I think it’s important,” Lukas said.

Lukas blames himself for Winning Colors’ only loss. “I was overconfident,” he said. “I didn’t do enough with her before the race.”

Lukas might be characterized as overconfident again, and it doesn’t appear that he’s done much with Winning Colors this week, working her in a ho-hum half-mile Tuesday. But he expects the result here to be much different, and if no one runs with Winning Colors in the first half-mile Saturday, the trainer might be counting his money early.

“An early time of :46 or :47 is definitely within her grasp,” Lukas said. “And if they let her get away with :47 or :48, then they can run up the white flag in this one.”