Colt Works His Way to Kentucky : Derby: Technology wasn’t even nominated for the Triple Crown races until he proved himself in Florida.

Early last year, Bernie Mann, one of the owners of the New Jersey Nets, was talking with his horse trainer, Sonny Hine.

“How about going out and trying to buy me a Kentucky Derby winner?” Mann asked.

“We’ve already got one,” Hine said.

He was referring to Technology, the colt whose dam, Chief Nefertari, hemorrhaged during foaling and died a few months later. This orphaned weanling will be one of the favorites a week from today when the 118th Kentucky Derby is run at Churchill Downs.

When Chief Nefertari died, Technology was too old to be given a nurse mare. The son of Time For A Change was not wanted by his Kentucky breeders, John A. Bell III and trainer Shug McGaughey, and his low auction price as a yearling--$29,000--indicated that buyers at the Keeneland sale were not impressed either.

When Technology was an unraced 2-year-old, Hine and Savin thought enough of his conformation and bloodlines to buy him at a Calder auction in Florida for $102,000. This was only the third time that Savin, the grandson of the horseman who raced Mr. Prospector, had gone to six figures to buy a horse. Savin now owns 20% of Technology, and equal partners include Mann; Harold Rothstein of Hartford, Conn.; Leslie Legum of Baltimore and Al and Bob Ades, brothers who are in real estate on Long Island, N.Y.

What they share is a colt who has won three consecutive races, including the Florida Derby and the Tropical Park Derby in his last two starts. Technology has four victories, a second and a third in six starts, with earnings of $464,963.

Fans at Gulfstream Park, noting that Technology was making only his second stakes start, let him go at 12-1 in the Florida Derby. Hine was even reluctant to run the horse, thinking that he might be another prep race away from such a challenge, but jockey Jerry Bailey talked him into it. Technology won by 4 1/2 lengths. Three of the horses he beat--Dance Floor, Pistols And Roses and My Luck Runs North--are headed for the Kentucky Derby.

At the time he won the Florida Derby, Technology hadn’t been nominated for the Triple Crown races.

“It wasn’t that we didn’t like the horse. It was because Scott is superstitious about those things,” Hine said.

Several days after the Gulfstream victory, Savin made Technology eligible for the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes with a payment of $4,500, $3,900 more than an early nomination.

A month after the Florida Derby, Technology ran in his final Kentucky Derby prep, winning the Tropical Park Derby at Calder by 1 1/2 lengths as the 2-5 favorite. His time for 1 1/8 miles--an eighth of a mile shorter than the Kentucky Derby distance--was a slow 1:53, causing his stock among the country’s 3-year-olds to drop.

“The horse blew a shoe on the first turn and tore his foot,” Hine said at his barn at Churchill Downs the other day. “He had the race won and Bailey took up on him at the end. And the Calder track, which is a new racing surface, isn’t very fast. In other races on the card the same day, some good older horses ran much slower, and we were carrying more weight (119 pounds) than they did.”

Hine said that Technology’s foot is of no concern. Hine is flying in his blacksmith from Florida to re-shoe all four hoofs Monday.

Responding to a suggestion that he might be the fourth or fifth betting choice in the Derby, behind Arazi, Santa Anita Derby winner A.P. Indy and a couple of others, Hine took exception.

“I think we’ll be better than that,” he said. “Arazi will be the favorite, everybody knows that. We ought to be the second or third choice. We’ve got just as much right to be second choice as A.P. Indy does.”

Hine, the son of a Maryland trainer, has been training since 1948. He has been associated much of the time with Ben and the late Herman Cohen, brothers who raced horses and owned Pimlico, the site of the Preakness. Ben Cohen has been known to jokingly introduce Hine: “This is the man who made me a millionaire. . . . Of course, I started out with $3 million.”

Hine won an Eclipse Award with a sprinter, Guilty Conscience, in 1981. About that time he also trained Amber Pass, one of the best horses he has had. Bet Big, a multiple stakes winner in the early 1980s, first raced for Ben Cohen before he was sold to Scott Savin.

Hine’s only Derby starter has been Cojak, who was sixth here in 1976. Cojak, who won the Malibu Stakes at Santa Anita in 1977, had trouble running in a straight line; he was disqualified after finishing first in the Jersey Derby at Garden State Park.

Hine’s experience goes beyond horse racing. He had mutual interests--horses and poker--with a friend, J. Edgar Hoover, and worked three years as a special agent for the FBI. One of Hine’s assignments was undercover in Hong Kong during the Korean War.

He speaks Chinese and Russian but won’t be beating the Derby drums for Technology in any language. “When you come to a race like this,” Hine said, “the horse has to do the talking.”

Horse Racing Notes

Technology worked five furlongs out of the gate Friday at Churchill Downs in 1:00 2/5. . . . The Derby could gain another contender today if John The Bold wins the $125,000 Federico Tesio Stakes at Pimlico. John The Bold, a son of Graustark, was bred and is owned by Margaret McManus, wife of Jim McKay, the ABC broadcaster who regularly covers the Derby. A spokesman for ABC said Friday that if John The Bold runs in the Derby, McKay would be removed from the telecast as co-anchor with Al Michaels and be interviewed as an owner. John The Bold has won his last two races in Maryland, including a minor stake at Pimlico on April 4.

Straight To Bed and Brilliant Blue, horses who ran their last races at Santa Anita, are entered in the nine-horse Derby Trial as Churchill Downs opens its season today. Straight To Bed, who will be ridden by Corey Nakatani, broke his maiden at Santa Anita on April 12. Brilliant Blue, who isn’t nominated for the Triple Crown, won on the grass at Santa Anita on April 1. Alydeed will be favored in the Trial.