Arazi Lets Boutin Sigh in Relief : Horse racing: Derby favorite wins turf event by five lengths. Cauthen says the colt is in top form.

Kentucky Derby favorite Arazi dispelled doubts about his recovery from arthroscopic surgery last fall and breezed to a five-length victory Tuesday in the Prix Omnium II, his last preparatory race before the May 2 classic at Churchill Downs.

Excited by Arazi’s successful debut as a 3-year-old, even in a modest eight-horse field stocked with two of his stablemates from the Chantilly farm of trainer Francois Boutin, co-owners Allen Paulson of the United States and Sheik Mohammed Maktoum of Dubai used the occasion to continue their debate about where Arazi would race if he wins in Kentucky.

Paulson, 69, the Gulfstream Aerospace magnate, wants the chestnut colt to go for the Triple Crown, America’s racing pinnacle.

“I’m a Yankee,” Paulson said after the race. “So you can guess where I’d rather see him run.”

Sheik Mohammed, 42, the Gulf state oil heir, wants Arazi to bypass the second and third legs of the Triple Crown, the Preakness on May 16 and the Belmont Stakes on June 6, and run June 3 in the English Derby. No horse in history has ever won a transatlantic derby double, and the English-educated sheik thinks the time has come.

Adding to the confusion of two owners, each with a 50% share of Arazi, are the two jockeys, London-based Steve Cauthen, an American who rides for Sheik Mohammed in Europe, and Pat Valenzuela, an American who has a contract with Paulson to ride all of the owner’s horses in the United States this year.

Cauthen was atop Arazi in his 1,600-meter (slightly more than a mile) victory on the Saint-Cloud turf track, perched in the hills across the Seine from Paris. Under instructions from trainer Boutin, he let Arazi’s stablemates set the early pace, then made his move at the top of the stretch of the one-turn race. It is one of the few tracks in France that runs counterclockwise, as U.S. tracks do.

“Every time I ride this horse, I’m more impressed,” Cauthen said. “I couldn’t dream of a horse moving any better than he did. He’s got a beautiful action and he feels like a Cadillac.”

The winning time in the race, in which Arazi went off as a 1-10 favorite, was a very slow 1 minute 48 seconds on a track listed as soft after an overnight rain.

Smiling the most was Boutin, the successful French trainer who had fretted about the consequences of surgery on Arazi last fall, after the colt’s stunning, runaway victory in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs. Boutin opposed the surgery to remove bone chips near the tops of two knees and said it cost him a month of work with the horse during recovery.

“When you do surgery like that, it is like operating on a child who is still growing,” Boutin said. “I was very worried. But after watching him work for the past two weeks, I am completely calmed.”

He rated Arazi at 70% of his potential in Tuesday’s performance.

“He did better than I thought he would,” Boutin said. “I thought he would be tight, but he was very relaxed. True, he was breathing hard. But I think by the next time he races (in the Kentucky Derby) he will be 100%.”

Boutin said he will probably ship Arazi to the United States a week before the Derby.