THOROUGHBRED RACING / BILL CHRISTINE : ‘Dotage Index’ Not an Age-Old System, but It Seems to Work

Since Leon Rasmussen began writing about it in the Daily Racing Form in 1981, the dosage index has hung heavy over every running of the Kentucky Derby.

The dosage index is a pedigree analysis that forecasts whether a horse has the speed and the stamina to win at 1 1/4 miles, the distance of the Derby.

Last year, when Sea Hero was the upset winner of the Derby for owner Paul Mellon and trainer Mack Millon, John Nelson of the Associated Press introduced still another system for picking the winner of the race: The dotage index.

“Mellon’s 85 and Miller’s 71,” Nelson said. “Sea Hero had both the dosage and the dotage.”

A review of Derby winners for the last 10 years shows that Nelson’s theory about dotage is no one-time thing. By and large, the horsemen behind the Derby winners have been advanced in years. Here are the ages of the owners and trainers of those winners (in the case of multiple owners, an average was used), with the total years representing the dotage index:

Horse Owner(s) Trainer Index Swale 34 70 104 Spend A Buck 42 35 77 Ferdinand 72 73 145 Alysheba 61 50 111 Winning Colors 67 52 119 Sunday Silence 76 76 142 Unbridled 92 48 140 Strike The Gold 58 43 101 Lil E. Tee 82 52 134 Sea Hero 85 71 156

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With the exceptions of 1985, when whippersnapper Dennis Diaz and his wet-behind-the-ears trainer, Cam Gambolati, won with Spend A Buck, and 1991, when an ownership triumvirate and trainer Nick Zito won with Strike The Gold, the index shows that when it comes to winning the Derby, those under 50 need not apply. The average index for the last decade is 123, led by the Mellon-Miller combination and followed by trainer Charlie Whittingham’s victories for different owners with Ferdinand in 1986 and Sunday Silence in 1989.

Whittingham, who turned 81 this month, is the oldest trainer ever to win the Derby, and he’s back this year with two contenders, Strodes Creek and Numerous. Howard Keck, who owns Numerous, a $1.7-million yearling purchase, bred Ferdinand and raced the colt in his former wife’s name.

Because they are both octogenarians, Whittingham and Keck give Numerous a 161, the highest dotage index for any Derby candidate this year and higher than any index since at least 1984. Using the 10-year average of 123 as a threshold, only six contenders--Numerous and Strodes Creek, along with Holy Bull, Brocco, Tabasco Cat, Valiant Nature--have a chance to win the Derby this year. Here’s a rundown of the top horses according to index:

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Horse: Index

Numerous: 161 Strodes Creek: 145 Holy Bull: 148 Brocco: 139 Valiant Nature: 139 Tabasco Cat: 135 Halo’s Image: 121 Ride The Rails: 115 Blumin Affair: 112 Soul Of The Matter: 108 Go For Gin: 106 Kandaly: 104 Lakeway: 103 Smilin Singin Sam: 96 Powis Castle: 95 Irgun: 92 Mahogany Hall: 82

Being a new system, the dotage index has not yet been embraced by the racing community. After all, dosage has had a 13-year head start. But dotage has created a stir just the same.

When told about the dotage index for Smilin Singin Sam, the Remington Park Derby winner, a spokesman for the colt’s owner, Dogwood Stable, said, “This is very disappointing. We knew our dosage was too high, and now we find out that our dotage is too low. What are you going to do?”

Irgun, winner of the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct last Saturday, races for Marianne and Brandon Chase. “There’s not much they can do at this late stage,” said a friend of the Chases. “Steve Young’s a good trainer, but he’s only 32. Maybe they could come up with an older trainer before the Derby, to get that index up.”

The dotage index crowd, which operates by that universal rule known as flying by the seat of your pants, had to come up with a special provision to establish a number for Holy Bull. Because the Florida Derby and Blue Grass Stakes winner is owned by his trainer, Jimmy Croll, Croll’s age was doubled in order to give the colt an index.

Croll has little use for dosage or dotage. All he knows is that the free-running Holy Bull is the horse to beat in the Derby.

“Let me tell you a story about dosage,” Croll said the other day at Keeneland. “There’s a retired travel agent who sits in the box next to me at Monmouth Park. He’s not a bad guy, but I would call him a horse degenerate.

“Anyway, Holy Bull wins his first race there last August, and this guy goes home to his computers. Dit, dit, dit, he starts hitting the keys, putting this stuff in and crossing that stuff with new stuff, and then he sees me in the box the next day.

“ ‘They might say your horse doesn’t have the dosage,’ he says, ‘but the way I figure it, he’ll be all right. It’ll be no problem. This horse will go a mile and a half.’ ”

Asked what he thought of this opinion, Croll pointed to both of his ears. “It goes in one side and comes out the other,” the trainer said.