HORSE RACING / DERBY TRIAL : Numerous Wins by Two in Slop

A few days ago, trainer Charlie Whittingham said that Numerous would have to win the Derby Trial by 15 lengths before he would consider running the colt in the Kentucky Derby.

On Saturday morning, several hours before the Trial, Whittingham increased that to 25 lengths. And he wasn’t done.

Numerous won the $111,600 race by two lengths, splashing home on a sloppy track as Churchill Downs opened its season. “If he had won by 33, we might have thought about going (to the Derby),” Whittingham said in the winner’s circle.

Numerous will go to Pimlico to run in the Preakness, the second leg of the Triple Crown, on May 21. The 81-year-old Whittingham, the oldest trainer to win a Derby with Ferdinand and Sunday Silence in the 1980s, will saddle Strodes Creek as he tries for a third victory next Saturday.

“I think Numerous has a very big chance to win the Preakness,” said Whittingham, who finished second at Baltimore with Ferdinand in 1986 and won the race with Sunday Silence in 1989.

When Chris McCarron entered the paddock Saturday, he hardly recognized the colt whom he had ridden to his maiden victory last year at Santa Anita and a fourth in the Santa Anita Derby three weeks ago. Without telling the jockey, Whittingham had outfitted Numerous with a pair of black blinkers.

After the race, McCarron and Whittingham agreed that the blinkers had helped. “I thought about doing this a couple of a times earlier,” Whittingham said. “But I didn’t want to be doing it too soon. He’s been gawking around in his races. I thought that this might get his mind on his business.”

Making his sixth start, Numerous scored his second victory and earned $72,540. He is owned by Howard Keck, the oil tycoon who raced Ferdinand in his former wife’s name. Keck bought Numerous, a son of Mr. Prospector and Number, a Nijinsky II mare, for $1.7 million, the highest price paid for a yearling at auction in 1992.

With 19,360 on hand in showery weather, Numerous paid $4.40 as the heavy favorite. He raced in the middle of the six-horse field early, never more than three lengths behind, and took the lead inside the eighth pole.

The time for the mile was 1:37 1/5. Dynamic Asset finished second, followed by Exclusive Praline, Tarzans Blade, Commanche Trail and Crary. None of them is expected to run in the Derby, which is holding as a 15-horse race.

“He’s been a little slow coming around in his head, but he was very aggressive today,” McCarron said of Numerous. “He had been a kind of playboy out there. He’d run in spots and then not run. This race is a nice step forward.”