TRIPLE CROWN RATINGS

Calder Race Course in Miami is not a traditional starting point for horses that go on to win the Kentucky Derby.

The Florida route to the Derby usually has been through Gulfstream Park and/or Hialeah. Since Calder opened in 1971, only two horses associated with the track have become Derby winners. Spend A Buck, the winner in 1985, raced four times at Calder as a 2-year-old. And in 1990, before he won the Derby, Unbridled began his winter at Calder.

Two of this year’s better 3-year-olds are expected to use the track for their tuneups. Technology, winner of the Florida Derby at Gulfstream, is now based at Calder with the rest of trainer Sonny Hine’s horses and might run in the 1 1/8-mile Tropical Park Derby there on April 11.

This Sunday, the $100,000 What A Pleasure Stakes at 1 1/16 miles will be held at Calder, and Alydeed became a heavy favorite for that race after his trainer, Roger Attfield, told Turfway Park officials on Monday that the colt wouldn’t be going to the Cincinnati area for their $500,000 Jim Beam Stakes on Saturday.

As prep races go, the What A Pleasure is not a classic. Unbridled had to win the stake in 1990 before the committee that rates races recognized it, giving the race Grade III status.

Calder introduced a new racing surface when its season began a week ago. The track used to have a synthetic Tartan base covered by sandy loam as a cushion, but the concept never caught on, either at Calder or elsewhere. Calder was renowned for its slow times--due in part to the mediocre horses that ran there--but it was also a track with the reputation of putting fitness into a horse. When Brave Raj won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Santa Anita in 1986, her trainer, Mel Stute, credited two prep races at Calder as the reason she was ready to run.

This season, new management at Calder dug up the Tartan foundation and replaced it with a conventional surface, much like Gulfstream Park’s. Early reviews from trainers have been good but guarded.

A Calder line on Alydeed’s modest past-performance record will add to the Canadian-bred colt’s status as the most curious of this year’s Derby candidates. Alydeed’s two-race career began with a small stakes race at Woodbine near Toronto last June; he won easily.

The colt, a grandson of Alydar, then underwent arthroscopic surgery for a chipped ankle and resumed training this winter in Florida. Attfield brought Alydeed back March 1 at Gulfstream, and he scored a 9 1/2-length, wire-to-wire victory, running six furlongs in 1:09 3/5 against nondescript opposition.

The defection of Alydeed shattered Turfway officials, who are left with a nine-horse Jim Beam field and no clear-cut favorite.

The probables for the 1 1/8-mile race include Big Sur, a colt with a blood condition who ended a six-race losing streak in the Southwest Stakes at Oaklawn Park; Treekster, an unheralded horse who made A.P. Indy work hard to beat him in the San Rafael at Santa Anita; Vying Victor, winner of the Remington Park Derby; and Snappy Landing, whose 3-year-old campaign has begun with two second-place finishes in allowance sprints at Aqueduct.

For its first eight years, the Beam struggled to find a niche as a Kentucky Derby prep race. The Beam’s status grew in 1990 when Summer Squall won at Turfway before finishing second in the Derby and winning the Preakness. Then last year, Hansel, the Beam winner, was a 10th-place disappointment in the Derby before he won the Preakness and Belmont Stakes and was voted the Eclipse Award as best 3-year-old colt.

Some of Santa Anita’s top jockeys will be riding in the Beam, with Pat Valenzuela aboard Treekster and Gary Stevens handling Snappy Landing.

Arazi, the future-book Derby favorite and the colt Valenzuela hopes to ride at Churchill Downs on May 2, is continuing his training in France, his co-owner, Allen Paulson, said Monday. “We had his knees X-rayed, and were told that the operations (in November) were very successful,” Paulson said.

The other night, Paulson was reviewing tapes of Arazi’s races, including the only one he lost, in France in his first start last May. “I think the reason he got beat was because the jockey (Freddie Head) started whipping him and he didn’t like it,” Paulson said. “He had the lead, and when the jockey started hitting him, he dropped over to the fence and seemed to lose interest in running.”

Arazi has rarely felt the whip since, and won under a hand ride from Valenzuela in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs.

Advisory panel for The Times’ Triple Crown Ratings: Lenny Hale, vice president for racing at Aqueduct, Belmont Park and Saratoga; Frank (Jimmy) Kilroe, director of racing emeritus at Santa Anita; and Tommy Trotter, racing secretary at Hialeah.

TRIPLE CROWN RATINGS

Horse S 1 2 3 Earnings 1.Arazi 8 7 1 0 $1,095,802 2.Bertrando 5 4 1 0 691,665 3.A.P. Indy 5 4 0 0 447,555 4.Technology 5 3 1 1 330,803 5.Dance Floor 10 4 4 0 618,859 6.Pine Bluff 8 3 1 2 304,988 7.Casual Lies 8 5 0 1 370,628 8.Pistols And Roses 9 5 2 2 596,046 9.Big Sur 10 3 1 1 210,930 10.Snappy Landing 6 1 4 1 261,560