His Hopes for Derby Rise Again

There are certain things that occur in nature and in sports that are entirely fitting and gratifying and welcome. Tom Kite winning the Open last year. It was about time the gods of golf smiled on him.

You wish Sam Snead could have won one. Or two. You wish Ernie Banks could have played in a World Series. Maybe Ivan Lendl should have won Wimbledon. Bjorn Borg, the U.S. Open.

But deserving something and getting it are two different things. The world of sport sometimes seems to be run by perverse demons whose greatest delight is inflicting what Aristotle called undeserved misfortune. Perhaps Dempsey should have beaten Tunney, or Denver should have won a Super Bowl.

So, there was a measure of satisfaction for some of us when a horse named Corby won the San Felipe Stakes at Santa Anita Sunday.

It wasn’t just the horse we were rooting for, it was the owner.

Allen Paulson is one of the world’s richest men, but he doesn’t act like it. He doesn’t go everywhere in a crowd of cronies and sycophants. He was a wartime pilot who later set round-the-world flying records and built a financial empire on a private jet airplane business.

He was, along with the late Armand Hammer, one of the few American businessmen with entree to Soviet leaders, such as Boris Yeltsin, even before Russia went capitalistic.

But what Paulson would like to do more than anything in the world is win a horse race--the Kentucky Derby.

He thought he had it in his hip pocket--or, at least, his portfolio--a couple of years ago. He had the gritty gelding, Dinard, who had worn down his opposition on the West Coast, then had gone to Kentucky and impressed even the hardboots along the backstretch. He would have gone off the favorite in the 1991 Derby, but he came up sore five days before the race.

At the time, it didn’t seem a major catastrophe because Paulson had a horse over in France, Arazi, who seemed to be able to do everything but save babies from burning buildings. He won six out of seven races as a 2-year-old, then came to America for the Breeders’ Cup. Running in this country, on dirt and counterclockwise for the first time in his life, Arazi ran away from everything the United States could put on the track against him.

Arazi looked like the second coming of Man o’ War. But he had knee problems and had to be operated on in France. When they flew him over for the Kentucky Derby, he had to try to run it on three legs.

Then, this year, Paulson surveyed his banner batch of 3-year-olds and decided that Stuka and the skittishly fast filly, Eliza, were the class of the class.

No one paid a great deal of attention to a less precocious colt named Corby. Not until Stuka went sour and had to be taken out of training.

Before Paulson parcels his stock out to various public trainers around the tracks, he grades them. Stuka and Eliza got A’s on their report cards. Corby got a B, maybe even a C.

They didn’t know quite what to do with the stepchild, Corby. His sire had been the hard-running grass horse, Dahar, who had won, among others, the 1 1/2-mile San Luis Rey on turf at Santa Anita in 1986. They thought Corby might be a chip off the old hock and prefer the greensward.

So, they put him on the lawn with indifferent results. Three jockeys had a crack at keeping him straight, but he bumped into more passers-by than a New York pickpocket. Still, he was always in the photo at the finish.

He got back on the main track by accident. Weather forced the track to reschedule a mid-February allowance race on the dirt instead of the turf. It was like a duck back on a pond. Corby not only tow-roped his field, he ran the last quarter of the mile race in 24.3 seconds.

The San Felipe at Santa Anita is not a classic race, but it is an important one. Seven winners have gone on to win the Santa Anita Derby and three--Determine, Affirmed and Sunday Silence--have gone on to win the Kentucky Derby.

But this year, because of rain-interrupted schedules, the San Felipe took on all the trappings of a major Derby prep. All of the elite Derby prospects in the West needed the race. They were all in the iron stalls Sunday.

Corby beat them all handily and might have vaulted into the favorite’s position for the Kentucky Derby, certainly for the Santa Anita Derby, if he contests it. He might run instead in the Blue Grass in Kentucky a week later.

How would Paulson feel about heading for Louisville with a favorite in tow yet again? How many times can you go there with the horse to beat--and come back with only an old mint julep glass instead of the blanket of roses?

The race is harder to win than the state lottery. Great owners have fired and fallen back. C.V. (Sonny) Whitney, whose name is synonymous with thoroughbred racing, tried a dozen times--with 15 horses--without winning. Alfred G. Vanderbilt couldn’t win it, even with the great Discovery in 1935 or Native Dancer in 1953, two of the greatest horses ever to be saddled. The great Elmendorf stable couldn’t win it in eight tries.

Paulson is not intimidated. Before the San Felipe, an acquaintance came up to him in the paddock.

“Too bad about Stuka,” he consoled.

“Oh,” said Paulson, nodding toward Corby being saddled, “this is a terrific horse. He’ll win today.”

He did. But can he do it at Churchill Downs in May? He has one thing in common with Man o’ War--he has a long stride, 28 feet. He doesn’t have to pound a track. He can float it.

He might have another thing in common with Man o’ War. He never won the Kentucky Derby, either.

Paulson hopes he will do what even a Whitney and a Vanderbilt couldn’t do. And what Man o’ War didn’t do--and Dinard and Arazi, for that matter.