Most Big-Time Jockeys Will Be on Sidelines : Pincay May Be the Only Winner of a Past Derby in Saturday’s Race

If Houston and Laffit Pincay don’t win the Kentucky Derby next Saturday at Churchill Downs, the first-place horse will be ridden by a jockey who has never won the Triple Crown race before.

While the 115th Derby will have its biggest favorite since Spectacular Bid in 1979--Easy Goer and his lesser-regarded entrymate, Awe Inspiring, will be the odds-on choice--it is also a race virtually devoid of jockeys with winning Derby experience.

Pincay rode in the Derby 10 times before Swale gave him his first victory in 1984 and his overall record in the race is one for 15. Not counting the undecided riding assignments on four of the 16 horses--Majesty’s Imp, Flying Continental, Notation and Wind Splitter--the announced jockeys have an aggregate record of one victory in 41 Derby tries.

ABC will spend 90 minutes televising the two-minute Derby and the network could use most of the time just introducing some of Saturday’s riders. Three of the jockeys--Jo Jo Ladner on Northern Wolf, Chris DeCarlo aboard Faultless Ensign and Don Pettinger with Clever Trevor--will be riding in their first Derby and three other riders will be making only their second appearance.

Name jockeys--Jacinto Vasquez, Jorge Velasquez, Eddie Delahoussaye (twice), Pincay, Angel Cordero, Bill Shoemaker, Chris McCarron and Gary Stevens--have won every Derby run in the 1980s and only Pincay appears to have a mount this time, although there is talk at Churchill Downs Sunday that Shoemaker, who has won the race four times, might wind up riding Flying Continental.

These are some of the reasons why an uncommonly high number of unknown jockeys will become prominent names if only for a day:

--With Easy Goer such a heavy favorite, many top California and New York jockeys are staying home and riding at Hollywood Park rather than shopping for a Derby mount. “They can make a lot of money without leaving town, especially if the horse they might ride in Kentucky doesn’t have much of a chance to beat Easy Goer, which is the case with most of the horses in the Derby,” said Jack Robbins, who as owner Jack Kent Cooke’s West Coast adviser is shopping for a jockey to ride Flying Continental.

--Trainers this year are showing unusual loyalty to the jockeys who rode horses in the races that brought them to the Derby. Frank Brothers, for example, successfully insisted that Larry Snyder ride Dansil even though the colt’s owner, John Franks, reportedly preferred a change. Snyder rode Dansil to victory in the Arkansas Derby.

--Pat Day, who rode some other Derby horses--including Western Playboy and Notation--in successful preps, had to be replaced because of his long-term commitment with Easy Goer.

If Day wins he will need no introduction, although he has never won at the Derby in six tries. Day has won many another major races, including three victories in the Breeders’ Cup and one Preakness.

Day’s most bitter experience in the Derby came in 1987. He rode the favorite, Demons Begone, and the colt bled profusely from the nostrils and had to be pulled up on the backstretch.

“I have the feeling that there’s a Derby up there someplace with my name on it,” Day said. “Maybe this will be my year.”

Julie Krone, racing’s premier female jockey, could have become the third woman to ride in the Derby, but she turned down the mount on Wind Splitter.

“I don’t want to finish last,” Krone said. Wind Splitter is winless in five starts this year, losing his last race on a disqualification at Pimlico after finishing first.

Krone might have been more receptive had she been offered the mount on Faultless Ensign, who won the Garden State Stakes in New Jersey in his last start. Krone was aboard Faultless Ensign the race before that, a seventh-place finish, but Ben Perkins Sr., the father of the horse’s trainer and manager of the syndicate that owns the colt, said the sorry performance by the colt wasn’t her fault.

“Julie followed our instructions to the letter,” Perkins said. “But we gave her bad instructions.”

DeCarlo, 20, won the Garden State with Faultless Ensign and has retained the mount in the Derby.

“I’ve got no problem using a jock who’s never ridden in the Derby,” Perkins said. “Look at some of the jockeys who have won the race, guys like Bill Boland, Ira Hanford and Steve Cauthen.”

The only two apprentices to win the Derby have been Hanford, with Bold Venture in 1936, and Boland, aboard Middleground in 1950. Boland was listed as a 16-year-old when he won, but he said years later that he lied about his age to get a jockey license a year sooner and was actually 15 when he rode Middleground. Affirmed gave Cauthen a Derby victory five days after the jockey’s 18th birthday in 1980. With Affirmed, Cauthen later became the youngest jockey to ever sweep the Triple Crown.

Clever Trevor has won eight of 12 starts and Pettinger, a leading jockey at Remington Park in Oklahoma City, Okla., has ridden the good-looking gelding every time.

“We never considered anybody else to ride in the Derby,” said Donnie Von Hemel, who trains Clever Trevor. “Don is a good rider and he sure knows this horse. Besides riding him every race, he’s also been on him every time he’s breezed, even going back to his 2-year-old year, before he ever ran.”

The Von Hemel and Pettinger families have been connected in racing for about 20 years. Pettinger’s brother, an assistant trainer under Jack VanBerg, was a jockey who rode almost all of the horses for Von Hemel’s father.

McCarron, who rode Hawkster in his last race, a fourth-place finish in the Santa Anita Derby, wasn’t interested in riding the colt in the Derby, which McCarron won with Alysheba in 1987. So trainer Ron McAnally came up with Marco Castaneda, 38. A rider since 1965, Castaneda is getting his second chance in the Derby, having finished fourth with Water Bank, another McAnally trainee, in 1982.

“We’ve got a hot (blooded) horse, so we hope a cool rider will balance it out,” McAnally said.

Castaneda is known for sitting still on a horse. It’s the kind of the style that has gotten him a return ticket to Churchill Downs, where program sales should be up this Saturday. The 125,000 or so fans won’t be able to tell most of the Derby jockeys without one.

JOCKEYS FOR THE 115TH KENTUCKY DERBY

Derby Record Horse Jockey (Mounts--1-2-3) Easy Goer Pat Day 6-0-1-0 Awe Inspiring Craig Perret 2-0-1-0 Sunday Silence Pat Valenzuela 2-0-0-0 Western Playboy Randy Romero 4-0-0-0 Houston Laffit Pincay 15-1-4-2 Dansil Larry Snyder 2-0-0-0 Notation Chris Antley 0-0-0-0 Hawkster Marco Castaneda 1-0-0-0 Northern Wolf Jo Jo Ladner 0-0-0-0 Wind Splitter No rider named ------ Irish Actor Eddie Maple 8-1-2-0 Triple Buck Jose Santos 1-0-0-0 Faultless Ensign Chris DeCarlo 0-0-0-0 Clevor Trevor Don Pettinger 0-0-0-0 Majesty’s Imp R.D. Lopez 0-0-0-0 Flying Continental Bill Shoemaker or Corey Black