RACING NOTES : Frisky, Squall End Up the Favorites : Kentucky Derby: Departure of Champagneforashley may pull a few borderline horses into competition.

The decision made by Champagneforashley’s connections to skip the Kentucky Derby is likely to prompt the owners of a few borderline horses to take a shot in the Derby, but the core number is about 14--the two favorites, a handful with a long shot and the spear carriers.

As May approaches, the deep group that began accumulating at Saratoga as 2-year-olds is down to the reigning Puerto Rican Horse of the Year, Mister Frisky--the next Bold Forbes, in some opinions--and Summer Squall, who won the Hopeful at 2 and has yet to take a misstep in the heat of competition. He is being compared by some to Demons Begone, who failed to finish after bleeding as the favorite in the 1987 Derby.

Summer Squall has won the Jim Beam and Blue Grass impressively despite persistent rumors concerning his soundness and speculation over when his bleeding problem will reappear.

The Storm Bird colt has done nothing to calm the rumor mill in two easy triumphs on off tracks. He rested in his stall for three days following the April 14 Blue Grass--a suspiciously long time--before being shipped to Churchill Downs at midweek. A slow work, 1:02 2/5 for five furlongs Tuesday shakes the tree a bit more.

Trainer Neil Howard insists everything is fine, saying that the horse was just tired after the Blue Grass and that the work was just the right amount of exercise.

One record is safe now that Champagneforashley, having been jarred by a pothole on the road to Louisville after being bet down to 7-2 in the future book, is out of the Kentucky Derby. No horse with the spaces removed from its name has won the Derby during its first 115 years.

Peter Brant is on a very negative roll. As if facing a federal prison sentence after pleading guilty to income-tax charges wasn’t enough for Brant, Stella Madrid, owned by Brant, lost her first start of the season, and the venerable Thoroughbred Record, founded in 1875 and published recently by a company in which Brant owns a 47.5% interest, will cease to be issued, effective immediately.

In 1986 Brant purchased the trade publication, which for years competed in the weekly breeding-trade market with the Blood Horse and, for a short time, with the Thoroughbred Times. The new owner immediately yielded the weekly slick-magazine market to the Blood Horse, and the Record was converted to a monthly under Brant. In 1988, he merged his magazine with two properties owned by Richard Broadbent, founder of Bloodstock Research Information Service, a statistical data base, and Thoroughbred Times, a weekly newspaper published for breeders. The Record’s demise was quickened, according to several sources, by editor-in-chief Mark Simon, who held equity in Broadbent’s enterprises and emerged from the merger with a 5% interest in Thoroughbred Publications.

Simon was one of several editors at the Record before joining Broadbent and was the original editor of Thoroughbred Times, which was first published in 1985. According to Simon, folding the 115-year-old magazine was strictly business. Advertisers, primarily breeding farms, responded unfavorably to the monthly version of the Record.