MAKING A NEW BID : Blue Grass Stakes May Show Whether Dispersal Can Give Delp, Meyerhoff Another Spectacular Run for the Roses

Easy Goer is being called the best potential winner of the Triple Crown since Spectacular Bid 10 years ago, and Bud Delp can understand why.

“I haven’t seen that kind of piston-like action in a horse since Spectacular Bid,” Delp said. “He has the same kind of stride, which was effortless.”

Delp should know. In 1979, he trained Spectacular Bid, who won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness before a third-place finish in the Belmont Stakes cost him the Triple Crown.

For Delp and Spectacular Bid’s owners--Harry and Teresa Meyerhoff and Harry’s son, Tom--every day was New Year’s Eve during that Triple Crown campaign. The Meyerhoffs didn’t toot horns or wear paper hats, but there was no mistaking that a six-week party was going on. If Spectacular Bid had been able to talk, he would have complained that his handlers were keeping him awake.

Delp began promoting the colt even before the horse arrived in Kentucky. Spectacular Bid had been the champion 2-year-old colt in 1978, finishing the year with five straight wins, and just before he extended the streak to eight with a victory in the Florida Derby in early 1979, Delp said, in a quote that deserves to be the horse’s epitaph: “This is the best horse that ever looked through a bridle.”

Spectacular Bid made Bud Delp a soothsayer, because by the time he was retired at the end of 1980, the gun-metal gray colt had won 26 of 30 races, been voted Horse of the Year and earned $2.7 million, a record at the time.

Delp and Harry Meyerhoff tried to recapture some of that euphoria in 1984, but their Silent King, who had done some winning at the Fair Grounds, was less successful in Kentucky and finished ninth in the Derby.

Now, Delp and Meyerhoff are back, with the undefeated though lightly raced Dispersal, who’ll try to gain his fourth straight victory in Saturday’s $250,000 Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland. It’s the same race that Spectacular Bid won by seven lengths.

While Delp is making favorable comparisons between Easy Goer and Spectacular Bid, he is not saying there is any resemblance between Spectacular Bid and Dispersal, except that this colt, a $45,000 yearling purchase, does possess an early turn of foot.

Beyond that, Delp doesn’t know what he has, because Dispersal’s three wins have come against questionable opposition at the Fair Grounds.

Delp isn’t even sure his Louisiana Derby winner will be Kentucky Derby-bound.

“My horse not only has to win, he has to win big in order to go to the Kentucky Derby,” Delp said. “I know Easy Goer hasn’t been around two turns yet, but the way he ran in winning the Gotham (a near-record 1:32 2/5 mile), he’s already qualified for the Indianapolis 500. That horse is enough to give everybody else an inferiority complex. He’s bordering on greatness.”

Spectacular Bid cost the Meyerhoffs even less than Dispersal at auction--$37,000. A son of Sunny’s Halo, the 1983 Kentucky Derby winner, and Female Star, the daughter of Johnny Appleseed, a Louisiana Derby winner, Dispersal didn’t run as a 2-year-old because of sore shins, a common problem among young horses.

Delp had Dispersal ready to run at Hawthorne last July when the shin problem first flared. Delp thought Dispersal was healed in December, but after he ran him in a training race at the Fair Grounds, it flared again.

Finally, Dispersal made his first official appearance at the New Orleans track on Feb. 15, winning a maiden race by five lengths. Delp wheeled him right back in a minor stake 11 days later and he won by a length.

“That may be the first time I’ve ever done that--run a horse around two turns (the distance was a mile and 40 yards) in his second start,” Delp said.

The 1 1/16-mile Louisiana Derby was two weeks after that, and Dispersal, after leading most of the way, was headed by Majesty’s Imp at the eighth pole, but came on again for a one-length win.

After running three times in 26 days, Dispersal will have had more than a month’s rest before he runs in the Blue Grass. The 1 1/8-mile Derby prep is being run three weeks before the Derby, after traditionally being run only nine days in advance.

The first stake that Dispersal won was a division of the Risen Star, named after another horse that came out of New Orleans without much fanfare a year ago. Risen Star, third in the Kentucky Derby and winner of the Preakness and Belmont, had won the Louisiana Derby, but needed a win at Keeneland before he gained a following. Dispersal needs to do the same thing Saturday.

Horse Racing Notes

Six horses are entered in the Blue Grass, with Western Playboy listed as the favorite. In post-position order, they are: Arcadia Falls, with Jamie Bruin, at 15-1 odds; Feather Ridge, no rider listed, 3-1; Tricky Creek, Larry Melancon, 3-1; Western Playboy, Randy Romero, 1-1; Revive, Mike Morgan, 12-1, and Dispersal, Jose Santos, 8-5. Tricky Creek and Feather Ridge, both trained by Rusty Arnold, will be coupled in the betting. All of the horses carry 121 pounds. . . . Brian’s Time will run for the first time as a 4-year-old on April 26, in the Ben Ali Handicap at Keeneland. Also scheduled to run is Granacus, who won last year’s Blue Grass.