Top Derby Contenders Are Tightly Bunched Up

This is the season when anticipation for the Kentucky Derby starts to build, and when racing fans start to develop allegiances to the 3-year-olds they like. Last year at this time, for example, New Yorkers were extolling Easy Goer as a potential superhorse and Californians were saying that a youngster named Sunday Silence might have great potential.

But with the 1990 Kentucky Derby only about five weeks away, I have still not heard a single horseplayer on either coast proclaim, “ --- is my Derby horse.” The majority of colts who looked like contenders at the start of the year have discredited themselves with bad performances. Most major stakes races have been won virtually by default. And the 3-year-olds who have run well are surrounded by questions involving their stamina or their fitness.

I could not come close to compiling a credible top-10 list of Kentucky Derby contenders. Instead, here are the top five:

-- 1. Mister Frisky is the only 3-year-old in America with an aura of star quality about him. He won all 13 of his starts in Puerto Rico, leading all the way in each of them, then came to California and beat the best colts in his age group in races at seven furlongs and one mile. Already he possesses the second-longest winning streak in history. He could equal Citation’s record in the Santa Anita Derby April 7, and break it in the Kentucky Derby.

In spite of this formidable record, Mister Frisky is only a tepid favorite in Las Vegas future book wagering. Doubts persist about his ability to go 1 1/4 miles. Even when he won the one-mile San Rafael Stakes he had everything in his favor. “That day,” said the West Coast’s top handicapper, Jeff Siegel, “he got a comfortable lead in a slow pace, and he was running on a very speed-favoring track. He’s head-and-shoulders above what we have out here so far, but I want to see if he can go a distance.”

-- 2. Summer Squall was one of the country’s top 2 year olds last season, when he won all five of his starts. But he was sidelined by an injury, and his comeback was delayed when he bled in a workout at Gulfstream Park.

“It was serious,” said owner Cot Campbell of Dogwood Stable. “He bled severely from both nostrils.”

The colt was all but counted out of Derby contention until he made his debut in the seven-furlong Swale Stakes at Gulfstream and ran a sensational race to finish second behind the brilliant sprinter Housebuster. But trainer Neil Howard is being forced to play a difficult game of catch-up with Summer Squall, who still has never run in a distance race. He will get the chance on Saturday, when he runs against a good field in the $500,000 Jim Beam Stakes at Turfway Park.

-- 3. Champagneforashley remains the most enigmatic of the Kentucky Derby contenders. He won all three of his starts as a 2 year old, all by big margins over horrendous fields in New York. Then trainer Howie Tesher bypassed the more prestigious stakes races at Gulfstream this winter to run Champagneforashley against nonentities in the Tampa Bay Derby. The colt won, as expected, but he won by a narrow margin and came down with a case of colic thereafter. Because of that setback, Tesher doesn’t want to tax Champagneforashley too much now, and he will run him in one more soft spot before the Wood Memorial Stakes at Aqueduct April 21. So Champagneforashley will remain undefeated and unknown for a while longer.

-- 4. Tarascon finished within a length of Mister Frisky in California, then went to Oaklawn Park in Arkansas and blew away a field in a stakes race. If Mister Frisky is the top Derby contender, Tarascon can’t be far behind, but the same doubts surround them both: distance-running ability. Tarascon is basically a speed horse too, and his pedigree may not permit him to run effectively at 1 1/4 miles.

-- 5. Unbridled emerged as the top 3-year-old in Florida this winter when he won the Florida Derby by four lengths. However, the slow times of the major stakes at Gulfstream suggest that the horses there -- including Slavic, Yonder, Roanoke, Rhythm, Shot Gun Scott and Smelly -- were a mediocre bunch. Unbridled was the best of a bad lot, but at least he has the seasoning, the stamina, the pedigree and the stretch-running style to win the Kentucky Derby if the others on this list flop.

This could well be a year in which a horse wins America’s most famous race by default. The key to the Derby probably belongs to Mister Frisky. If he flops when he attempts to run 1 1/8 miles on April 7, the Derby will be wide-open. But if Mister Frisky proves his stamina, he will go to Louisville as one of the most talked-about and exciting Derby favorites in many years.