Shot Gun Scott ‘Calder Horse’ in Blue Grass With a Chance at Winning Kentucky Derby

When a Florida trainer has what’s known as a Calder horse, he’s not receiving a compliment. It’s not as denigrating as having a Caliente horse, but it’s in the same rhetorical ballpark.

Shot Gun Scott is the Calder horse in Saturday’s Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland, the Calder horse with a chance of winning the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on May 5.

Since it opened 19 years ago, Calder has always been the track from the wrong side of the tracks on the South Florida racing circuit. Gulfstream Park and Hialeah were the big leagues, Calder was triple-A. Even in recent years, when Hialeah’s fortunes dipped to the point where the track couldn’t even finish the season this winter, Calder was still a distant No. 3.

“The thing people forget is that when horses come over here to run, they’re still from over there,” said a handicapper at Gulfstream a couple of weeks ago.

Terry Meyocks, the racing secretary at Calder, defends his track. Meyocks says Calder has kept figures over the last six years, and the track’s horses have won a respectable 42% of the time they’ve run during the mid-winter dates at the two other tracks.

And in 1985, a horse from “over there” really did all right. Calder-based Spend a Buck won the Kentucky Derby and was voted horse of the year.

Now, Shot Gun Scott is another Calder horse who seems to belong. He is 5-1 on the morning line in the $250,000 Blue Grass, behind odds-on Summer Squall and Unbridled, and Shot Gun Scott has finished ahead of Unbridled, the Florida Derby winner, three times.

Shot Gun Scott is probably an afterthought for the pundits plotting this year’s Kentucky Derby because, besides being a Calder horse, he doesn’t run very often and his owners and trainer have tended to downplay his ability.

And the 3-year-old colt wasn’t high on the list of many jockeys at Gulfstream.

Finally, one of the horse’s owners, Jean Friedberg, sent Dave Penna over to the barn. Penna worked the horse once, made a deal with Sarazin and won the Fountain of Youth. Penna will be aboard again Saturday.

Before the Fountain of Youth, Shot Gun Scott had won four of seven starts at Calder and in his only race away from that track, finished fourth in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile last November at Gulfstream.

Shot Gun Scott earned $70,000 in the Breeders’ Cup, and Meyocks ought to get a commission, because he was responsible for the horse’s running. The day before payments were needed to keep horses eligible for the Breeders’ Cup, Shot Gun Scott won the Florida Stallion Stakes, beating Unbridled by 2 3/4 lengths.

“We weren’t even thinking about the Breeders’ Cup,” said Sarazin, 44, a soft-spoken former Chicagoan. “Meyocks called and said we might just as well give it a try. We only had about 12 hours to make up our minds before the money was due.”

If Penna should go all the way to the Kentucky Derby with Shot Gun Scott, it will be a pay-back of sorts for what befell the 31-year-old Canadian-based jockey with Sunny’s Halo and Regal Classic. Penna rode Sunny’s Halo eight times as a 2-year-old, winning five races, but Eddie Delahoussaye was on the horse’s back the day he won the Derby in 1983. In 1988, Regal Classic, another horse that Penna had gotten familiar with the year before, was ridden by Laffit Pincay to fifth place in the Derby.

Penna has never ridden in a Derby.

“I’ve ridden a lot of nice horses and I’m excited to be on this one,” he said. “He’s beaten all the big horses in Florida. He’s very consistent and he always runs hard. Maybe he’ll continue to do that and prove the best of them all--just because he’s trying.”

One horse that Shot Gun Scott didn’t beat in Florida is Summer Squall, who ran just one race down there. Only Housebuster has beaten Summer Squall, who if the Derby were run today would be the second choice behind Santa Anita Derby winner Mister Frisky, according to Keeneland-Churchill Downs line maker Mike Battaglia.

After running seven times as a 2-year-old, Shot Gun Scott has run only twice this year, in the Tropical Park Derby and the Fountain of Youth.

His owners--Friedberg and Scott Hamilton, both native Kentuckians--were pointing for Keeneland, where they could run Shot Gun Scott before many of their friends.

Even though the Blue Grass will provide the best group of opponents Shot Gun Scott has faced, Sarazin is not reluctant to be here.

“We have got to find out some day about how good this horse is,” he said. “He has to run a good race, and probably finish in the first three, to go on to the Derby. The timing of the race is right. This horse does better if his races aren’t run close together.”

Horse Racing Notes

Summer Squall, who drew inside for his victory in the Jim Beam at Turfway Park on March 31, has the No. 1 post in the 1 1/8-mile Blue Grass, with Pat Day riding. Outside them, in order, are Top Snob, with Jerry Bailey riding; Iskandar Elakbar, Richard Migliore; Shot Gun Scott, Dave Penna; Unbridled, Craig Perret; Land Rush, Angel Cordero, and Slew of Angels, Ricardo Lopez. All will carry 121 pounds.

Undefeated Champagneforashley faces seven other New York-breds today in the seven-furlong De Witt Clinton Handicap at Aqueduct.