Colt Has Talent in the Raw : Kentucky Derby: Whittingham hopes Strodes Creek will win despite going unraced as a 2-year-old.

Strodes Creek didn’t run last year, and no unraced 2-year-old has won the Kentucky Derby since Apollo in 1882.

Strodes Creek has made only four starts, and no horse so green has won the Derby since the filly Regret in 1915.

Neither of Strodes Creek’s two victories have come in a stake, and the Derby has been won by only two non-stakes winners--Alysheba in 1987 and Proud Clarion in 1967--in the last 37 years.

Were any trainer other than Charlie Whittingham running Strodes Creek in the 120th Derby on Saturday, he would be facing a daily inquisition from reporters.

But it’s a little late to be questioning the training style of Whittingham, 81, who has developed 10 champions, won the Derby twice and was elected to the Racing Hall of Fame 20 years ago.

Sunday Silence, who gave Whittingham his second Derby victory in 1989, had won the Santa Anita Derby by 11 lengths four weeks before. But when Whittingham brought Ferdinand to Churchill Downs in 1986, the trainer knew something few others knew. Although Ferdinand was a well-beaten third in the Santa Anita Derby, he would be ready for the Derby because Whittingham was going to crack the whip in the mornings, sending the colt through a series of rigorous workouts with his stakes-winning filly stablemate, Hidden Light.

Four days before the Derby, Ferdinand worked five furlongs in a blistering 58 3/5. He won the Derby by 2 1/4 lengths, and paid $37.40.

“We took so much out of the filly that she didn’t have much left for the Kentucky Oaks (the day before the Derby),” Whittingham said. “We sacrificed the filly to win with the colt. But Howard Keck owned both horses (with his former wife, Libby), so he was happy.”

One recent morning at Churchill Downs, while Sonia Simmons, Strodes Creek’s exercise rider, walked the big colt around the shed row after a two-mile gallop, Whittingham stood outside barn 41 and pointed to stall 22. “That’s where he (Strodes Creek) is, and that’s where the other two (Ferdinand and Sunday Silence) were.”

When Ferdinand ran in the Derby, Whittingham was 73, becoming the oldest trainer to ever saddle a winner in the race. Sunday Silence won three weeks after Whittingham’s 76th birthday.

Before Ferdinand’s Derby, Whittingham hadn’t run a horse in the race since Divine Comedy’s ninth-place finish in 1960. His only other Derby runner had been Gone Fishin’, who finished eighth in 1958.

“Hell,” Whittingham said after Ferdinand won, “if I’d known it was going to be this much fun, I wouldn’t have waited so long to come back.”

The year after Ferdinand, Whittingham brought Temperate Sil to Louisville, but he started coughing a week before the race and didn’t run. The year before Sunday Silence’s Derby victory, Whittingham finished 11th with Lively One.

If Strodes Creek is to win the Derby, he will do it with a new jockey, Eddie Delahoussaye, and with a recent equipment change, the blinkers Whittingham added before his third-place finish behind Brocco and Tabasco Cat in the Santa Anita Derby. Both of those horses are running in the Kentucky Derby, with Brocco expected to be second on the morning line, behind Holy Bull.

Delahoussaye came on board after Corey Black rode Strodes Creek in all of his other races, which included a five-length maiden victory in his first start, at Santa Anita on Jan. 15, and an allowance victory there on March 5. Strodes Creek finished second to the speedy Argolid in his other race, at Santa Anita on Feb. 12.

“Black did all right with the horse,” Whittingham said, “but we grabbed Delahoussaye when he became available. I think he’s the best big-race rider in the country.”

Delahoussaye, who also is in the Hall of Fame, has won more than 5,200 races and won the Derby in 1982 with Gato Del Sol and in ’83 with Sunny’s Halo. This will be his ninth appearance in the race.

Delahoussaye, who is based in Southern California, was introduced to Strodes Creek when the colt worked a mile in 1:42 4/5 at Churchill last Tuesday.

“He’s a big, lazy horse, and he showed that that morning,” Delahoussaye said. “I’ve watched him in his races, and I know he’s been aggressive. Now I know what he’s like, and I know he’ll be aggressive in the Derby.”

Strodes Creek was bred by Arthur B. Hancock III through a mating of Halo with Bottle Top, a Topsider mare. Sunday Silence, owned in a partnership that included Hancock, Whittingham and Dr. Ernest Gaillard, was also sired by Halo. Hancock, a partner with Leone Peters in Gato Del Sol, was unsuccessful in selling Strodes Creek before he raced, and now campaigns him in an equal partnership with Whittingham and Robert and Janice McNair, who bought a share of the horse shortly before the Santa Anita Derby.

When Whittingham asked to add blinkers for Strodes Creek’s Santa Anita Derby run, he was questioned by the stewards, who normally dislike to permit an equipment change for a horse coming off a winning race.

When Whittingham arrived at the stewards’ office, he pulled out his trainer’s license and fired it in the direction of the stewards’ desk. “If you don’t think I know what I’m doing,” he said, “then you better take this.”