Rhythm Taps to a Derby Beat, but Score Reads Breeding Blues

One of the favorites to win the Kentucky Derby, Eclipse Award winner Rhythm, will begin his 3-year-old campaign today in the seven-furlong Hutcheson Stakes at Gulfstream Park in Florida.

But according to Dan Liebman, who writes the “Bloodlines” column in the Daily Racing Form, Rhythm is out of tune as a possible Kentucky Derby winner.

Liebman says that the Dosage Index--a formula for calculating speed and stamina based on breeding--eliminates Rhythm, along with Adjudicating and Southland-based colts Farma Way and Drag Race.

With Hollywood Futurity winner Grand Canyon sidelined because of an injury, who is left among the top contenders? Liebman lists Southland-based Single Dawn and Pleasant Tap; lightly raced Summer Squall; Roanoke; Secret Hello; Senor Pete; Slavic; Yonder; Champagneforashley; Appealing Breeze; Carson City, and Unbridled.

Common scents: Andrew Beyer of the Washington Post on Maryland’s top Kentucky Derby candidate, a son of Judge Smells: “It is hard to imagine walking into Churchill Downs at some time in the future and seeing etched above the paddock, on the souvenir mint julep glasses and on the walls of the Kentucky Derby museum, the single word: SMELLY.”

Trivia time: When playing in domed facilities, the Western Conference All-Stars are 3-0 with the Lakers’ Pat Riley as coach. What is their record under Riley on regular-season courts?

Born to the purple: Patrick Reusse of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis on Viking General Manager Mike Lynn’s handling of the Herschel Walker trade with the Dallas Cowboys: “For the appropriate historical comparison, we might have to go back to April 30, 1803. That’s the day Napoleon Bonaparte agreed to sell the Louisiana Territory to the United States for $11.25 million, thanks to a couple of smooth talkers named Robert Livingston and James Monroe.

“Vikings who have negotiated with the man will tell you the comparison between Napoleon and Lynn is not at all exaggerated, although Remarkable Mike’s imperial attitude is telegraphed with a smirk, not a hand tucked in his jacket.”

No one is spared: The Clipper injury jinx is more insidious than commonly thought. With guards Ron Harper and Gary Grant already on the sidelines, ball boy Andrew Dorff, a seventh-grader at Campbell Hall School in North Hollywood, has suffered a broken ankle.

Trivia answer: Winless in four games, at the Forum, the New Jersey Nets’ Byrne Arena, the Dallas Mavericks’ Reunion Arena and Chicago Stadium.

Quotebook: Associated Press boxing writer Ed Schuyler, arriving in Tokyo to cover the Mike Tyson-James Douglas heavyweight title fight, when asked by the passport inspector how long he expected to work in Japan: “About a minute and 33 seconds.”