Luster Missing From Florida Derby

The Florida Derby is annually one of America’s most colorful racing spectacles, with marching bands, a flying circus, a jousting exhibition and a falconry show as part of the day’s entertainment at Gulfstream Park. Unfortunately, there may be one big anticlimax here today: the derby itself.

When the racing season began here two months ago, there was every reason to believe that this $500,000 event would be the definitive prep race for the Kentucky Derby. All of the country’s leading 3-year-olds were assembled at Gulfstream and virtually all of them were pointing for this race.

But not a single big-name horse here lived up to expectations in previous stakes this winter. Instead of anointing a favorite for the Run for the Roses, the Florida Derby will at best give its entrants a chance to reestablish their credibility. It is possible that the main event will turn out to be a less significant race than the seven-furlong Swale Stakes earlier on the day’s program.

Unbridled, Roanoke and Slavic may be the top choices in the Florida Derby, based on expectations that they will improved on their third-, fifth- and sixth-place finishes in the Fountain of Youth Stakes, the prep for this event. Unbridled was blocked in the stretch and closed strongly when he was clear.

“If he hadn’t been blocked, he would have won,” said Slavic’s trainer, Scotty Schulhofer. “He’s the horse we have to beat.”

Slavic too was caught in the midst of traffic in the stretch run. Roanoke was making his first start of the year, and he should benefit from that effort today.

But the Fountain of Youth was a weak race, won in slow time by lightly regarded Shot Gun Scott. That a horse may improve on his effort in it is hardly a ringing endorsement. Besides, the amount of trouble encountered by Unbridled and Slavic was overrated.

Handicappers might look toward the two colts who weren’t in the Fountain of Youth field, Country Day and California-based Single Dawn. But both are stretch runners whose style may hurt them on a speed-favoring track in a field with little pace.

The only two horses with any quickness in the lineup are Run Turn and Sunny Serve; the latter finished fourth in the Fountain of Youth at 220-to-1 odds. Their speed could make them dangerous.