KENTUCKY DERBY : Lil E. Tee Has Arazi Crawl Home : Horse racing: The odds-on favorite finishes eighth, the 13th consecutive betting choice to fail. The winner, ridden by Day, pays $35.60.

The second coming of Arazi to Churchill Downs turned out to be the first coming of Pat Day in the Kentucky Derby.

Unable to win a Derby in nine tries, twice with favorites, Day whacked Lil E. Tee 15 times left-handed through Churchill’s long stretch Saturday as the longshot colt staggered to a one-length victory over Casual Lies before 132,543.

Arazi’s failure was as surprising as Lil E. Tee’s victory. Advertised as the next Secretariat after he easily defeated America’s best 2-year-olds in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile here in November, the pony-sized French horse became the latest in a 13-horse string of favorites to fail in the Derby.

Arazi moved into third place with a quarter of a mile to run, but then collapsed like a souffle and finished eighth in a field that was cut to 18 starters by the late scratch of Santa Anita Derby winner A.P. Indy.

Lil E. Tee didn’t run fast, but he ran well enough to win $724,800 of the $974,800 purse for his owner, 82-year-old Cal Partee of Magnolia, Ark. Partee, unable to win the Derby three times before, including a third-place finish in 1984 with Lil E. Tee’s sire, At The Threshold, bought Saturday’s winner for $200,000 after he had made his second start and won a maiden race by 11 1/2 lengths at Calder Race Course last October.

Before Partee bought the horse, his breeder, Lawrence I. Littman--whose initials account for the horse’s first name--was able to sell him for only $2,000 as a yearling because he had been weakened before the sale by stomach surgery.

Lil E. Tee, the first Pennsylvania-bred to win the Derby, ran the 1 1/4 miles in 2:04. Since 1945, all of the Derbys on fast tracks have been run faster, except for Cannonade’s 2:04 in 1974.

With Arazi sent off at 9-10 odds, Lil E. Tee was 16-1 and returned $35.60 to win, the best payoff for a Derby winner since Ferdinand’s $37.40 in 1986 and the 10th best Derby price ever. Trained by Lynn Whiting, Lil E. Tee had been a consistent horse going into this 118th Derby, with four victories, three seconds and a third in eight starts. In his last two races, he went to Turfway Park near Cincinnati to win the Jim Beam Stakes, which had never produced a Derby winner, and he was second, beaten by a neck, in the Arkansas Derby that was won by Pine Bluff.

Casual Lies, a $7,500 yearling owned and trained by Shelley Riley, was third, behind A.P. Indy and Bertrando, in the Santa Anita Derby, and under Gary Stevens he looked like a winner until Lil E. Tee passed him on the outside with an eighth of a mile to go.

Casual Lies finished 3 1/4 lengths ahead of Dance Floor, who took the lead in the backstretch and didn’t relinquish it until Casual Lies moved in front at the top of the stretch.

Dance Floor’s margin over Conte Di Savoya, the fourth-place finisher, was two lengths, and after them came Pine Bluff, Al Sabin, Dr Devious, Arazi, My Luck Runs North, Technology, West By West, Devil His Due, Thyer, Ecstatic Ride, Sir Pinder, Pistols And Roses, Snappy Landing and Disposal.

The first four finishers were 16-1, 29-1, 33-1 and 21-1, the first time there has been such a parade of longshots since 1951, when Count Turf, a horse from the parimutuel field, won the Derby. The $2 exacta on Lil E. Tee and Casual Lies paid $854.40.

Arazi’s excuses were pre-packaged--double knee surgery, running with only one prep race this year and drawing next to the outside in the large field. But the publicity that started with his arrival from France a week ago had him overcoming all of those obstacles.

Back at Arazi’s barn after the race, trainer Francois Boutin took defeat graciously.

“You made this horse a super-horse, not me,” Boutin said to reporters. “So you can explain how the super-horse got beat.”

That humor aside, Boutin suggested that the main reason Arazi lost was because of a lack of seasoning, and he also cited a not-so-perfect ride by Pat Valenzuela, who had won the Breeders’ Cup race the only time he rode the colt before.

Because of the knee surgery, a few days after the Breeders’ Cup, Boutin got a late start with Arazi as a 3-year-old. Allen Paulson, who owns 50% of Arazi after having sold the other half to Sheik Mohammed al Maktoum for $9 million, was eager for Boutin to get the horse ready for the Derby.

“We had to get him ready too fast,” Boutin said through an interpreter. “There was not enough time. The horse has been in good condition for only the last two or three weeks. He was completely tired after about 500 meters (three-eighths of a mile) and was not breathing properly. He moved from 17th (place) to third very fast, and that took quite a bit out of him.”

Arazi was last going under the wire the first time. Valenzuela brought him eight-wide down the backstretch, and for a time it appeared that the horse was going to duplicate his sweeping acceleration in the Breeders’ Cup.

On the far turn, with Valenzuela able to move Arazi closer to the fence, he drew into contention, behind only Dance Floor and Casual Lies. He was almost even with Casual Lies leaving the turn. Lil E. Tee, who was 10th after a half-mile, moved up to fifth on the turn, and Day had a choice of trying to split horses--Casual Lies and Arazi--or going around them. He took the outside route.

“I was content with where I was the first part of the race,” said Valenzuela, a Derby winner astride Sunday Silence in 1989. “He was well in hand and started picking them up down the backside, pretty easily on his own. Going into the turn, I thought we were going to gallop away with the race. I asked him a little bit at the quarter pole to get by Dance Floor, and he couldn’t do it.

“Going into the last turn, I thought there was no way he was going to get beat. When I got to the leaders, I thought I was just going to inhale them. I still think he’s a champion. I still think he’s the best horse I have ever ridden, even in defeat.”

No matter how Valenzuela rode, Boutin didn’t think Arazi could have won, but the trainer did say: “There was a lot of tension for the jockey. He had everybody on his back. But he held the horse back too much in the early part of the race. He did not get him in good position. The horse was going good, he was fresh, but he was held back.”

Boutin had hinted last week that he was only hoping that Arazi might be ready off a one-mile victory against weak competition in France. After the race, he said: “The horse did not have his usual action today. I felt that he was not happy after he came here, because there were too many horses around. He didn’t act like he did at Chantilly, and he was a different horse going into this race than he was in the Breeders’ Cup.”

Lil E. Tee escaped some serious trouble going into the first turn. He ran up on the heels of Thyer, who had come from Ireland.

“We were lucky to stay up,” Day said. “I anticipated that we would clear the other horse, but as it turned out, we didn’t.”

When Arazi went past Lil E. Tee, taking aim at the leaders, Day thought it might be the Breeders’ Cup all over again. He had ridden Dance Floor to a sixth-place finish that day, and saw the French horse first-hand.

“Arazi had come here and wooed the world,” Day said. “Today, he went by me with complete authority. I tried to go with him, but I wasn’t able to. He had a little more acceleration than I did at that point. So I followed them around. Then when Pat (Valenzuela) asked his horse to run coming off the turn, and he didn’t sprint away, I started feeling better.”

At the wire, the Hall of Fame jockey was feeling best of all. Pat Day had finally had his day at Churchill Downs.

Derby Longshots

Highest payoffs for winners of the Kentucky Derby since $2 mutuel bets began in 1911 with winner, year and price:

Horse Year Payoff Donerail 1913 $184.90 Gallahadian 1940 $72.40 Proud Clarion 1967 $62.20 Exterminator 1918 $61.20 Dark Star 1953 $51.80 Gato Del Sol 1982 $44.40 Bold Venture 1936 $43.00 Zev 1923 $40.40 Ferdinand 1986 $37.40 Lil E. Tee 1992 $35.60

* LOST OPPORTUNITY

A.P. Indy, the Santa Anita Derby winner and one of the leading contenders in the Derby field, is scratched before the race because of a sore hoof. C15