THE KENTUCKY DERBY : Champagneforashley All Bubbly

The Kentucky Derby is the first Saturday in May. You don’t know much about horse racing, but you do get excited about the Derby and you’d like to have a rooting interesting going into the race. Well, have I got the horse for you.

His name is Champagneforashley. He’s one to take to your heart because he’s a New York-bred going against all those Kentucky bluebloods. And he’s trained by a lovable New York kind of guy named Howie Tesher who could be cast in a road production of “Guys and Dolls” and who is being second-guessed all over the place by his enemies--and friends.

And, not incidentally, Champagneforashley is undefeated in his five starts and will make his final prep for the Derby in the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct in New York on Saturday.

This is Tesher, an ever-smiling 54-year-old who talks in run-on paragraphs.

He said, “There is a Manure Syndrome on the race tracks. There’s something in the manure that infects us, that makes us crazy to stick with a game in which almost everybody loses more than he wins.”

He was holding court in his little office next to his row of stalls in Barn 59 at Belmont in New York.

“You haven’t seen one person who walked in here this morning,” he said, “who is a normal person. That’s the Manure Syndrome. . . .”

Looking at a photo of Champagneforashley, Tesher said, “See that pigeon on the track in the picture. That pigeon is watching the horse closely because he’s studying to be a trainer. . . .”

Champagneforashley got his name (the legal limit of 18 units permitted for a thoroughbred) because his dam is Champagne Babe and when the foal was 2 days old and visited by Ashley Baker, a daughter of one of the horse’s three owners, the horse walked over to her.

“I thought it was a horrible name,” Tesher said, “but now that he’s run so well, people think it’s a great name. . . . “

The phone rang and Leon Feinblum, another owner, was on the phone asking Tesher about Champagneforashley’s bowel movements. “When he had colic,” Feinblum said, “that was what was wrong, so I go down a whole checklist whenever I call Howie.”

Feinblum said that he, Baker and Howard Kaskel, the third owner--all of them with varying degrees of success in real estate--had other horses with Tesher, “and not one of them had ever hit the board. But we gave him this horse--we have two others with different trainers--because he’s our kind of guy. He’s honest. He laughs at himself; we laugh at ourselves.”

Among Tesher’s other owners is George Steinbrenner. Tesher tells Steinbrenner stories and laughs--and hasn’t gotten fired, yet.

Tesher was born in New York, grew up in Florida, trains mostly in New York. His father was a bookmaker. His mother, he said, “was a good handicapper.”

A poor student at the University of Florida, he took six years to graduate. “I asked what’s the best way to get through. They said journalism, so I majored in that. . . . “ He tried and dropped journalism--”I couldn’t spell”--and other pursuits.

He worked as a lifeguard, gambled and eventually made it to the race track and a training career. His best horses up until now have been Darby Creek Road and Plankton. There was the day in 1986 he won the Washington, D.C., International with Lieutenant’s Lark, which paid more than $100. And he had a good bet on it.

Champagneforashley won his first start by 14 lengths July 27, his last start by 12 1/2 lengths Friday. Lightly raced because of assorted ailments, he has won in overwhelming fashion, yet he has not been tested against the toughest opposition. Hence the criticism of Tesher that he hasn’t run the colt enough, hasn’t brought him up to Saturday’s mile-and-an-eighth Wood Memorial distance properly.

There is concern about him going a distance because his sire, Track Barron, was regarded as a sprinter. Tesher said, “Track Barron was injured and never got the chance to go long. . . .”

He notes, too, that the dosage number--a breeding analysis popular with some experts that is highly complicated and oft questioned for determining Derby prospects--comes down strongly in Champagneforashley’s favor.