Stevens Sees the Past in Riding Casual Lies

Gary Stevens has ridden in enough Triple Crown races to know what it takes for a horse to win one.

In 1988, Stevens won the Kentucky Derby with a canny, front-running ride aboard the filly, Winning Colors.

But horses sometimes pay the penalty for running hard in the Derby and have little left for the other Triple Crown races: the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes.

After her Derby, Winning Colors started slipping. In the Preakness, the opposition didn’t let her take the early lead as she did in the Derby. Forty Niner, who just missed at the wire in the Derby, bumped and brushed the filly much of the way down the backstretch at Pimlico. Risen Star, a hard-luck third in the Derby, won the Preakness, with Winning Colors third and Forty Niner seventh.

By Belmont time, three weeks later, Winning Colors was wrung out. She raced close to the pace for a mile before finishing last in a six-horse field.

Risen Star was first again, a two-thirds Triple Crown winner.

Stevens cherishes his only Triple Crown race victory with Winning Colors, but his appreciation for Risen Star also lingers.

“The tougher it got, the better Risen Star liked it,” Stevens said. “What’s the word I’m searching for? Constitution, that’s it. Risen Star had such a strong constitution that it carried him through the Triple Crown.

“I think Casual Lies could be the same kind of horse. He’s versatile and tough. I think he could run 1,000 miles and not feel the effect.”

Like Risen Star, Casual Lies might have won the Derby, and will be one of the favorites when the Preakness is run for the 117th time at Pimlico today. A crowd of more than 80,000 is possible for the 14-horse race, the largest Preakness field since Personality beat 13 opponents in 1970.

Casual Lies is 6-1 on the Pimlico morning line, tied for third choice with Pine Bluff and Dance Floor behind Lil E. Tee (7-2), the Kentucky Derby winner, and Alydeed (9-2), who missed the Derby because of a lung infection.

In the Derby, with Stevens riding him for the first time, Casual Lies took the lead at the top of the stretch before Lil E. Tee ran him down and won by a length.

“My horse put in a tremendous quarter-mile run,” Stevens said. “At the five-sixteenths pole we were laying second. Then I ‘tow-roped’ him past Dance Floor to get the lead.”

Stevens was sniffing a second Derby victory.

“We were all by our lonesome,” he said. “Then my horse put up his ears after he got the lead. I had to re-break him, and while he was doing that, the other horse came by us.”

Instead of the roses and the $724,000 that went to the winner, Casual Lies settled for $145,000, pushing his earnings close to $600,000. Shelley Riley, who owns and trains the colt, bought him as a yearling for $7,500 and was unable to re-sell him for $100,000 as an unraced 2-year-old, buying him back for $45,000 when the bidding stalled.

Stevens had ridden only against Casual Lies before taking him for his seventh Derby mount. Late last year, Riley brought Casual Lies to Southern California, and at 52-1 he ran third, behind A.P. Indy and Dance Floor, in the Hollywood Futurity. Stevens rode Star Of The Crop that day, finishing 11th at 3-1.

Allen Patterson, a struggling Bay Area jockey who didn’t even have an agent, was riding Casual Lies and kept the mount through the colt’s third-place finish, behind A.P. Indy and Bertrando, in the Santa Anita Derby on April 4.

A few days after the Santa Anita Derby, Riley fired Patterson and hired Stevens.

Jim Patterson, the trainer’s husband, usually exercises their horses, but since Stevens had never been on Casual Lies, he was brought to Kentucky for an important five-furlong workout four days before the Derby. Casual Lies turned in a crackling 1 minute--the fastest time of the morning for that distance--and everyone was reassured that he was back on his game.

“Shelley didn’t panic when the horse got sick (a few days before the Derby),” Stevens said. “You’ve got to give her credit for that. And she was fair with me, too. Before that good work Derby week, she had said that she would release me to ride In Excess in New York on Derby day, if I didn’t want her horse.”

Now, Stevens is tapping on the door of his first Preakness victory.

“There should be more speed in the Preakness than there was in the Derby,” Stevens said. “I feel that Casual Lies is going to give us another top effort. We’ve got a big chance to win it.”

Horse Racing Notes

Asked about the negative comments that his sons made after Dance Floor had drawn the outside post for the Preakness, Lewis Burrell of the Oaktown Stable said: “Everything’s all right now. My son (Chris) got hot, but everything’s good now. We never thought anybody was cheating us. When you roll craps a few times, that doesn’t necessarily mean that anybody’s cheating you, but you still might want to look at the dice.” One of Burrell’s other sons is Hammer, the rap star who was also upset with Dance Floor’s drawing an unfavorable post for the third time in the last four races.

Trainer Roger Attfield says that Alydeed has these obstacles to overcome: “He got an outside post (No. 12), he’s only had one race around two turns, there’s a big field and he’s never seen this many people when he’s raced. Physically, though, he’s been doing very well.” . . . Lynn Whiting, who trains Lil E. Tee, sums up the Preakness this way: “There’s bona fide speed in the race, and there should be a fast pace up front. I’m just going to tell Pat (Day) to go to the clubhouse turn and take a left-hand turn.”

Miss Legality gave Chris McCarron his fourth victory in the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes by scoring a front-running 1 1/2-length victory in the rain Friday at Pimlico. No other jockey has won the stake more than twice. McCarron rides Pine Bluff in the Preakness. . . . The late-afternoon rain turned the track muddy for Friday’s last race. A clearing is expected today and Pimlico’s quick-drying dirt surface could still be fast for the Preakness.

Preakness Field

PP Horse Jockey Odds 1. Agincourt A. Madrid 99-1 2. Technology J. Bailey 5-1 3. Conte Di Savoya S. Sellers 10-1 4. Pine Bluff C. McCarron 5-2 5. Big Sur M. Smith 35-1 6. Careful Gesture R. Lester 75-1 7. My Luck Runs North E. Prado 35-1 8. Casual Lies G. Stevens 7-1 9. Lil E. Tee P. Day 6-1 10. Dash For Dotty T. Turner 30-1 11. Fortune’s Gone R. Douglas 99-1 12. Alydeed C. Perret 5-1 13. Speakerphone C. Ladner 13-1 14. Dance Floor C. Antley 8-1

Total purse with 14 starters--$744,800. Value to winner--$484,120; second--$148,960; third--$74,480; fourth--$37,240. Distance--1-3/16 miles.