Maryland’s Kentucky Derby Fever Might Leave Racing Fans With Chills

A New York journalist surveyed the entries for Saturday’s Kentucky Derby and asked, straight-faced, “Have they been putting something funny in the water supply at Pimlico?”

How else might one explain the fact that good trainers have brought dubious animals such as Northern Wolf, Wind Splitter and Notation to Churchill Downs for America’s most important horse race?

It would be nice to suggest that this unprecedented Maryland representation in the Derby is a reflection of the upswing in the quality of racing at Pimlico and Laurel. Unfortunately, what it represents is an upswing of irrational wishful thinking on the part of trainers and owners--a phenomenon not limited to Maryland.

Fifteen horses are set to challenge Easy Goer on Saturday, and at least half of them don’t have a prayer of finishing in the money; they’re simply cluttering the field and adding to the chance that racing luck could determine the winner.

The invasion from Maryland was led by Pulverizing, who came here to run in last Saturday’s Derby Trial as a tuneup for the main event. When the colt faded miserably, losing by more than 15 lengths, trainer Jerry Robb came to his senses and they went back home.

Jim Murphy, the trainer of Notation, acts as if he were back there, too; entering Notation on the strength of a slow victory against a weak stakes field at Keeneland evidently was an owner’s idea.

But both Hank Allen and Dale Capuano are thrilled about the prospect of coming to Churchill Downs. Allen hasn’t been here since his days as a major league baseball player, when the Washington Senators were playing an exhibition game at Louisville and he was able to make an excursion to the betting windows.

When his baseball days were over, Allen broke into the training business on a modest level, but proved his skill by developing good Maryland campaigners such as Sparrowvon and Island Champ. He has done a good job, too, with Northern Wolf, who looked like a one-dimensional sprinter most of his life but won a 1 1/8-mile stake at Pimlico in his last start--admittedly against very weak competition.

“He’s matured a lot and he handles himself like a nice horse,” Allen said. “I’m a believer in Dosage (a theory of pedigree analysis) and it suggests he should go the Derby distance. He’s good enough to be here. The owners wanted to come and have a rooting interest.”

Capuano’s presence here with Wind Splitter is evidence of the skill that has let him emerge as one of Maryland’s sharpest wheeler-dealers in the claiming game. He took Wind Splitter for $23,500 when the gelding was shipped into Laurel from Turfway Park last October.

“Normally I don’t claim horses when I haven’t seen them run before,” he said, “but he looked good and he was bet down and that got our attention.” Capuano’s instincts were right: Wind Splitter has since finished in the money in four straight stakes races.

But Wind Splitter couldn’t even finish first in an ordinary allowance race at Pimlico that was supposed to be his final Derby prep; he was placed first only by disqualification.

“I thought he was going to win pretty easy and as soon as the race was over I was disappointed,” Capuano said. But he soon rationalized the defeat and decided to stick with his plan to come to the Derby.

“Easy Goer looks unbeatable,” he said, “but I think we might have a shot at getting a piece of the purse.”

Entering a horse such as Wind Splitter in the Derby might seem a harmless exercise in self-indulgence, but it rarely does a horse any good to be thrust into competition way over his head. The Derby is the most stressful horse race in America and it often takes a toll on the horses who run in it.

While Capuano was justifying Wind Splitter’s poor showing in the 10th race at Pimlico on April 23, he should have been paying attention to the 11th race, in which a colt named No More Flowers was entered.

No More Flowers had looked like a pretty promising colt in the spring of 1987; he had even run a strong race in the Florida Derby. But it was obvious he had no business being entered in the Kentucky Derby: his 55-to-1 odds were fully deserved and his 15th-place finish was no surprise.

A harmless exercise?

No More Flowers was never the same again. When he was beaten in that medium-grade allowance race at Pimlico, it was his 11th straight defeat since his ill-advised Derby venture.

If it’s bad for overmatched horses, a futile run for the roses is also bad business for the owner. Not only does the horse miss a chance to run in a race where he could be earning money, but running here is a costly proposition.

“I don’t understand why people do it,” trainer D. Wayne Lukas said Monday. “It costs you $20,000 to start, and even if you finish third or fourth you get next to nothing.” Indeed, fourth-place money (the best a horse like Wind Splitter might hope for) is only $25,000.

A couple of hours after lamenting the fact that so many bad horses were going to be cluttering up the Derby field, Lukas announced he would enter a hopeless colt named Shy Tom in the Derby. He explained, “Mr. Young (owner W.T. Young) said ‘I’d really like to run’ and I gave him the pluses and the minuses. He said it wasn’t the money. In a nutshell, I guess he got Derby fever.”

If the most successful trainer in America can be a party to such irrationality, it probably is unfair to blame the members of the Maryland contingent here for succumbing to Derby fever, too. One only hopes that their horses don’t get in the way of contenders who have legitimately earned their way into the Derby field.