HORSE RACING : Fly So Free Remains a Product of Hype Heaven

When Fly So Free, the champion of his generation, lost his final prep race before the Kentucky Derby, casual fans might have assumed the prognosis for the spring classics had been thrown into chaos.

In fact, Strike the Gold’s victory over the champ in the Blue Grass Stakes barely changed anybody’s view of the Triple Crown.

The ill-informed souls who believed Fly So Free was the best 3-year-old in the country easily can rationalize away his defeat. The track at Keeneland was muddy, and Fly So Free never had raced on an off track before.

(This is a legitimate excuse. It was only last year that Unbridled gave a nondescript performance on a muddy track in the Blue Grass, then bounced back to unleash his victorious stretch run at Churchill Downs.)

The people who recognized that Fly So Free had been grossly overrated, that his credentials were largely spurious, viewed the Blue Grass result as a confirmation of what they already knew. Fly So Free isn’t the No. 1 Kentucky Derby contender now, and never has been.

The colt had, indeed, won all three of his stakes appearances at Gulfstream Park this winter, and had won them fairly comfortably. But each time he had benefited from optimal racing luck. When a horse enjoys a perfect trip, without encountering any adversity along the way, he usually will run the fastest race of which he is capable.

Yet in all three of those Florida races, Fly So Free never delivered a notably fast performance. His best effort hardly looked good enough to win a Kentucky Derby.

Fly So Free’s lofty status recalls many recent racing seasons, when most of the pre-Derby attention would go to an Eastern horse hyped by the Eastern media. But the true star of the 3-year-old generation often emerged from California and earned national attention for the first time by winning the Derby. This happened when Ferdinand carried Bill Shoemaker to victory in 1986, when the filly Winning Colors became the third of her sex to win in 1988 and when Sunday Silence proved to be a superstar in 1989.

The strongest members of the 3-year-old crop may again be in California, where Dinard defeated Best Pal to win the Santa Anita Derby, the most important prep race in the West.

Dinard has been running consistently fast, and he has been winning with powerful acceleration in the stretch. He has the style and the pedigree for the Derby distance. And he has a top trainer, Dick Lundy, and a top jockey, Chris McCarron. He fully deserves to be considered the leading contender for the Triple Crown series.

But with the Derby two weeks away, several remaining prep races could alter the outlook for the race.

Saturday’s $500,000 Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park conceivably could produce a contender. And Sunday’s Lexington Stakes at Keeneland may well make Hansel -- a colt owned by Washington’s Joe Albritton -- one of the prime candidates for the Derby. Hansel won the Jim Beam Stakes at Turfway Park in track-record time, but Turfway can be such a freakishly biased track it is sometimes difficult to take results there too seriously. A victory at Keeneland would legitimize Hansel.

However, the most riveting prep race will be the Wood Memorial Stakes at Aqueduct, where the undefeated filly Meadow Star will face males for the first time.

Even the cognoscenti don’t know quite what to make of Meadow Star. She has compiled a nine-for-nine record effortlessly, but she has done it against utterly nondescript members of her sex. She will get a legitimate test in the Wood from Cahill Road, a promising stablemate of Fly So Free. If Meadow Star is 10 for 10 Sunday night, she will become the most talked-about racehorse in America, and she will add a whole new dimension of interest to the Kentucky Derby.