CAN WOODY REPEAT ‘52? : That’s the Year Blue Man Gave Trainer, Now 74, His Only Preakness Win; Forty Niner’s Situation Is Similar

When a training career runs as long as 74-year-old Woody Stephens’, it is bound to come full circle once in a while.

In 1952, Stephens brought a colt named Blue Man to Pimlico to run in the Preakness Stakes. Blue Man had been given a good chance of winning the Kentucky Derby two weeks earlier, but after drawing the No. 14 post position--inside only two other horses--he ran wide the entire trip and finished third.

With Hill Gail, the winner of the Derby, on the sidelines here, Blue Man won the Preakness. Although Stephens has won the Derby twice and the Belmont five times, that was the only time he saddled the winner of the middle jewel in the Triple Crown.

Saturday, Stephens will try to win his second Preakness when he runs Forty Niner, another colt who had the misfortune to draw outside in the Derby. Forty Niner got the No. 17 post in a 17-horse field, was allowed to race off the lead by jockey Pat Day in the early going, then just missed catching the filly, Winning Colors, at the wire.

Winning Colors will be out to prove that her win by a neck in the Derby was no fluke. Stephens and Day are on a mission designed to keep the filly from getting the same kind of leisurely early lead that she enjoyed two weeks ago.

“If nobody goes with the filly this time, then we will,” Stephens said. “She’s sure not going to get loose this time.”

Developments at Pimlico Wednesday indicated that Day may have to push Winning Colors with Forty Niner early. It was announced that Din’s Dancer and Withers Stakes winner Once Wild, horses known for their early turns of speed, won’t be running in the 113th Preakness.

That reduces the field to nine starters: Winning Colors, Forty Niner and stablemate Cefis, Risen Star, Regal Classic, Brian’s Time, Private Terms and entrymate Finder’s Choice, and Sorry About That. There is also some question whether Risen Star, the third-place finisher in the Derby, will start.

Finder’s Choice also has early speed, but whether he can match strides with Winning Colors remains to be seen.

Forty Niner, the well-bred son of Mr. Prospector who was last year’s champion 2-year-old colt, is a much better horse than Blue Man.

“Blue Man had run for a $10,000 claiming price before I got him,” Stephens said. “I got orders to run him for $7,500, but after he worked a 1:24 seven-eighths (of a mile), I knew he was better than that.

“I ran him a mile in an allowance race, and he won and paid $47. Then he won in the slop by a pole at Jamaica, and I knew I had a horse. But he had too much going against him in the Derby. He was starting way on the outside, and Churchill Downs rolled the track so that it was like concrete on the inside. Hill Gail won after breaking from the 1 hole.”

Stephens said that Blue Man won a couple of more stakes after the Preakness and then was retired after suffering a tendon injury.

Stephens had little respect for Winning Colors before she became the third filly to win the Derby. He dismissed her time as mediocre and now is offering reasons that she won’t become the fifth filly to win the Preakness.

“She had four weeks between the Santa Anita Derby and Kentucky, and it looked like she needed it,” Stephens said. “I heard that at the spit barn (where horses are tested to see if they’ve run with illegal medication), she had trouble urinating, and that’s usually a sign of a tired horse. Now, she’s trying to beat me again, and this time she’ll only have half the time that she had between Santa Anita and Kentucky.”

Wayne Lukas, who trains Winning Colors, said that she lost 30 or 40 pounds running in the Derby.

“But that isn’t bad for a filly her size (about 1,100 pounds),” Lukas said. “She came out of the Derby much better than we could have hoped for.

“The thing I like about our chances going into the Preakness is that there are no horses lurking in the weeds. . . . Most of the horses we’ll have to beat Saturday are the ones that ran in Louisville, and they’ve had no more time off than we’ve had.”

Of the nine Preakness probables, only Finder’s Choice and Sorry About That skipped the Derby.

The Preakness has never been a favorite race for Stephens, mainly because of the track’s hardness and bias.

“Some years, if you didn’t draw on the rail, you had no chance,” he said. “I wouldn’t have run Swale here (in 1984) if he hadn’t won the Derby and had the chance to win the Triple Crown. Seth Hancock (Swale’s owner) ran a filly in the Black-Eyed Susan the day before and was so disgusted with the track that he went home to Kentucky and didn’t even stay for the Preakness.”

Being up close to the race that year would have made Hancock even more uncomfortable, since Swale finished seventh. Hancock also owns Forty Niner, and he’ll be around Saturday. He and Stephens want to beat the filly too badly to watch on television.

Preakness Notes

Winning Colors is trying to become the first filly to win both the Derby and the Preakness. . . . The last filly to run in the Preakness was Genuine Risk, who finished second here in 1980 after having won the Derby. A filly hasn’t won the Preakness since 12-1 longshot Nellie Morse in 1924. The other filly winners at Pimlico were Flocarline in 1902, Whimsical in 1906 and Rhine Maiden in 1915.

With rain forecast for the next couple of days, there’s the chance of an off track for the Preakness, which would be the first time the race has been run in the mud since 1983. Winning Colors has never run on an off track, and Forty Niner, Cefis and Private Terms are considered good mudders.