THOROUGHBRED RACING / BILL CHRISTINE : It’sali’lknownfact May Be Best of a Weak Crop From Florida

The joke out of Gulfstream Park is that there might not be a Florida Derby this year. If horsemen there were asked now to pick a favorite for the traditional Kentucky Derby prep race on March 20, they would be hard-pressed to reach a consensus.

The Florida situation is so unsettled that Sea Hero, perhaps the best 3-year-old at Gulfstream, is in the hands of a surrogate trainer. Mack Miller, who trained Sea Hero last year when owner-breeder Paul Mellon’s colt won the Champagne at Belmont Park and was a dismal seventh three weeks later in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, is in Aiken, S.C., with his horses this winter and has sent Sea Hero to a friend, Scotty Schulhofer. Sea Hero’s Florida schedule will be determined by Schulhofer, and then, if he is worthy, the horse will join Miller’s division in New York for the road to the Derby on May 1.

Already, though, Miller has sounded like a trainer who believes that Sea Hero’s future is on grass, where the colt scored two of his three victories last year. His victory on dirt in the Champagne Stakes came on an off track against a spotty group of opponents and was devalued by his subsequent listless outing in the Breeders’ Cup.

The horses that have been running in Florida this winter have done nothing to suggest greatness:

--Great Navigator has won a six-furlong stake, but he is by Gulch, a champion sprinter, and the colt has been a disappointment every time he has been asked to stretch out.

--Summer Set, winner of the Tropical Park Derby at Calder, has the worst kind of credentials to be considered for the Kentucky Derby. He is an Ohio-bred gelding. A gelding hasn’t won the Derby since 1929, and the only Ohio-bred to win was Wintergreen in 1909.

--Another Florida campaigner, Silver of Silver, won stakes in Florida and New York as a 2-year-old and deserves another chance after not being able to beat Summer Set from an outside post over a sloppy track.

Most recently, when a Florida horse makes an impact in Kentucky, it’s been a sneak attack.

In 1990, Unbridled won a weak Florida Derby, a race in which all nine starters were coming off losing efforts. He was unable to win the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland, explaining his 10-1 price at Churchill Downs. As a 3-year-old, Unbridled was at his best about half the time, and that half included victories in the sport’s biggest races, the Kentucky Derby and the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

In 1984, trainer Woody Stephens had two Derby candidates in Florida, and the klieg lights were on Devil’s Bag, undefeated as a 2-year-old. The Devil’s Bag express was untracked in the Flamingo at Hialeah, where he was a badly beaten fourth at 3-10 odds, and in the days before the Derby, the colt was retired because of a leg injury. Swale, a Florida Derby winner but an erratic performer, was Stephens’ safety net, and he won at Louisville by 3 1/4 lengths, the biggest margin in 11 years.

The following year, Spend A Buck went to Kentucky by way of everywhere, but he was considered a Florida horse, a flashy colt who had been introduced to the races at Calder the previous summer. Horses usually aren’t stout enough to carry their speed for the Derby’s 1 1/4 miles. But Spend A Buck did, winning by almost six lengths. He was only the fourth wire-to-wire winner since 1947.

Spend A Buck’s trainer, Cam Gambolatti, also trains It’sali’lknownfact, a Derby candidate this year, and because of that connection, this impossibly named colt is the best pre-Derby story in Florida. Gambolatti was an obscure Calder trainer before Spend A Buck, and he returned to oblivion soon after the Derby. Now he is back with another stakes winner, a horse that Laffit Pincay rode to a late-running second place in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.

Only the nation’s headline writers might be rooting against him. The Daily Racing Form’s Page 1 lead story was about It’sali’lknownfact the other day, and there was room only for the horse’s name in the headline. “I’m new to all this, but maybe there isn’t as much depth out there,” Bob Hess Jr. said. “I’m just glad I’ve got one of the horses who’s in the hunt.”

The 27-year-old Hess’s first classic horse is River Special, who was third in a tight finish with Gilded Time and It’sali’lknownfact in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.

Gilded Time, galloping again at Santa Anita after an abscess in his hoof took him out of training for four days, also has had his schedule compromised by Southern California’s wettest January in 24 years. Trainer Darrell Vienna is playing an early game of catch-up with a colt who raced only four times as a 2-year-old.

Gilded Time probably will be named champion 2-year-old colt when the divisional titles are announced Monday, which is obstacle enough for a Derby hopeful. The 2-year-old trophy comes with a curse. The last juvenile champion to win the Derby was Spectacular Bid in 1979.

Gilded Time and River Special have the dual disadvantage of trying to graduate from the Breeders’ Cup to the Derby winner’s circle. In eight years, Spend A Buck is the only horse to run in one race and win the other. His Derby victory came after a third-place finish in the 1984 Juvenile, the first year it was run.

In fact, only about one of every five Breeders’ Cup starters even runs in the Derby. Three Breeders’ Cup winners have been notable flops in the Derby: Capote was 16th in 1987; Fly So Free finished fifth in 1991; and Arazi was eighth last year. Three Breeders’ Cup Juvenile runners--Bet Twice, Easy Goer and Best Pal--finished second in the Derby. But racing is like the Super Bowl in that respect. Only their immediate families will remember.

Horse Racing Notes

Pacific Squall, who beat Avian Assembly on a sloppy track in a 1 1/16-mile race at Santa Anita three weeks ago, will try to outrun her again Saturday in the 1 1/8-mile La Canada Stakes, with the track expected to be fast. Nine 4-year-old fillies are entered in the $200,000 race. Pacific Squall drew the outside spot. Pacific Squall, who will be ridden by Chris McCarron, will carry the high weight of 119 pounds, to either 115 or 117 for the others. Jolie Band drew the rail, and next to her in order are Terre Haute, Interactive, Autumn Mood, Avian Assembly, La Spia, Secretly and Alysbelle. Terre Haute and Secretly will be coupled in the betting. . . . In another stake Saturday, the $100,000 Palos Verdes Handicap at six furlongs, Answer Do is the high weight at 121 pounds, despite a fourth place on an off track last time out. His six rivals are Fabulous Champ, Cardmania, Slew the Surgeon, Gundaghia, Star of the Crop and Music Merci. Star of the Crop is next in the weights at 119 pounds.