KENTUCKY DERBY : A Personal Decision to Put Up $2

Ever since I heard about this horse Rockamundo that ran and won with odds of 108-1, I have wanted to bet on him. Virtually every horse I have bet on in my life should have gone off at 108-1, and several of them have yet to finish.

For today’s 119th running of the Kentucky Derby, however, I cannot bring myself to put $2 on the snoot of Rockamundo.

This noble beast, known as “Rocky” to his keepers, did indeed go out and win the Arkansas Derby at odds the likes of which I haven’t seen since Las Vegas posted an early line on the guy who would replace David Letterman. Two weeks earlier, Rockamundo had to charge down the stretch to improve from ninth place to fifth, and two weeks before that, Rocky craned his neck at the wire to avoid being 12th.

So, no dough on Rockamundo?

Correctamundo.

But if you think this means I know where to put my two bucks, think again. How in the heck is anybody supposed to handicap a 19-horse race? Nineteen horses isn’t a Derby. Nineteen horses is a stampede.

There’s Union City, the horse that’s getting fatter. There’s Jenny Craig’s horse, Tossofthecoin, the horse that’s getting fitter. There’s Wallenda, the horse with the drooling disorder. There’s Storm Tower, the horse who is in mourning. There’s El Bakan, the horse that prefers to go bareback.

And, of course, there’s Prairie Bayou, the gelding, who brings new meaning to the phrase handicap a horse.

I see it this way:

1. Personal Hope.

2. Storm Tower.

3. Union City.

But I could be wrong. I usually am wrong. If you think I had any money on Lil E. Tee, or Strike The Gold, or Winning Colors, or Sunny’s Halo, hey, forget about it. Churchill Downs is a good place to go broke. Last time I won here, Secretariat was young and frisky. And it was a real no-brainer betting on Secretariat, since he was the greatest horse I ever saw that wasn’t ridden by Roy Rogers.

I like Personal Hope for several reasons. Gary Stevens is astraddle in the saddle, which maybe reason enough. Also, Personal Hope has wiped out the 1993 opposition at Santa Anita with the exception of one runner-up finish to Corby, a horse that might have a shot at winning the Kentucky Derby today if its starting position weren’t somewhere out there in the auxiliary gate in Tennessee.

Bull Inthe Heather seems to be the horse everybody down here is adopting this week. Not me. For one thing, this is a horse that enjoys being inside the gate about as much as Hannibal Lector enjoyed being strapped into that goalie’s mask. For another, “Bull” has won something like two of his last eight races. I predict that Bull Inthe Heather will finish Not Inthe Money.

Wayne Lukas has been fattening up Union City. The horse has gained 75 to 100 pounds since running second in the San Rafael Stakes, so either Lukas is building up Union City’s strength or the horse is sneaking out evenings to the White Castle for hamburgers. Union City’s workouts have been great, prompting Lukas to say: “I don’t know if I’ve got the best horse, but he’s going to raise hell out there.”

Jenny Craig, the weight-loss lady, and her husband, Sid, recently signed the papers to buy Tossofthecoin. Suddenly I picture a horse being fed small packages of nutritional food and working out on a Nordic track to Richard Simmons exercise cassettes. Imagine how jealous Tossofthecoin must be in the barn, watching that four-legged pile of cellulite, Union City, pigging out.

Wallenda, the horse who doesn’t know whether to run to the wire or tiptoe across it, is in fine shape “except for his usual tendency to drool,” according to trainer Frank Alexander’s wife, Linda. Yeah, I hate it when that happens. And how embarrassing this could be on national television, winning the Kentucky Derby and then drooling all over Jim McKay.

“We’ll give him a little alfalfa, which will settle him down,” Frank Alexander said. Ugh. Wouldn’t me.

Anthony Torretta died last Saturday, a week after his Storm Tower led wire to wire in the Wood Memorial, a week before his Kentucky Derby run. Storm Tower has worn a tiny black hoof-band for his owner, a man who brought 75-1 shot Faultless Ensign here a year ago against his handlers’ advice because he always wanted to be involved in at least one Kentucky Derby.

El Bakan doesn’t wear much of anything except a red-plaid hood. The owner, Robert Perez, says that Panamanian horses often gallop without a saddle, so he has El Bakan’s exercise riders sit on nothing more than a cloth and a pad. The hood is to protect the horse’s throat, because he recently went from 100-degree temperatures in Latin America to freezing weather in New York. The hood also makes El Bakan look like a challenger in the World Thoroughbred Wrestling Federation.

As for Prairie Bayou, the gelding. Here is a horse with guts but, uh, little else. No gelding has won the Kentucky Derby since 1929. If Prairie Bayou does, the only thing he may have to say to his owner after the race is, “Thanks for nothing.”