A 2-Year-Old Doesn’t Have a Guarantee

Two words of caution for any trainers out there with a Kentucky Derby prospect: Sovereign Don.

Anybody remember Sovereign Don? In July 1985, in his third race, he won the Tremont Stakes at Belmont Park. Less than a month later, he won the Saratoga Special. Two weeks after that, he won the Sanford at Saratoga, the same stake that was won by Secretariat and Affirmed when they were 2-year-olds.

A few days after the Sanford, a man contacted Gene Klein, co-owner of Sovereign Don, with a $1-million offer for the colt. Klein called his trainer, Wayne Lukas, who owned the other 50%.

“I don’t think we should sell,” Klein said. Sovereign Don had cost only $40,000 at a yearling auction. Selling him for $1 million would have represented a $960,000 profit, but Klein wanted more than that. He wanted a Kentucky Derby winner.

So did Lukas, but he had been in the game longer and was not the romantic that Klein was. Besides, all of Sovereign Don’s victories had been in sprints, and there was nothing in those races that translated into a successful 1 1/4-mile trip at Churchill Downs.

Lukas wanted to sell. Take the money and let the horse run--to another trainer’s barn. Klein ended the debate by writing Lukas a check for $500,000, the trainer’s share of the $1 million.

Sovereign Don stayed in the Lukas barn. In his first race after the non-sale, running beyond six furlongs for the first time, he was 7-5 while finishing third in the Belmont Futurity, losing by 15 1/2 lengths. In the Arlington-Washington Futurity, Sovereign Don was beaten by 14 1/2 lengths. In the Young America at the Meadowlands, he lost by 10 1/2 lengths.

That wrapped up his 2-year-old season, and there was no turn-around as a 3-year-old. Sovereign Don didn’t get close to Churchill Downs and won two of 15 starts against third-rate competition. As a 4-year-old, he went one for 13. The only stake he won after his 2-year-old season came at Canterbury Downs, at seven furlongs on the grass for a $25,000 purse.

Klein, who died in 1990, and Lukas still got their Derby, winning in Louisville with the filly Winning Colors in 1988, but the lesson from 1985 is that there are many more Sovereign Dons out there than the one magic horse that brings home the roses.

Had Shakespeare’s Dane owned horses, he would have said: “To sell or not to sell, that is the question.” In 1988, after Purdue King finished second in March in the San Felipe Handicap at Santa Anita, his breeder and owner, John Valpredo, got an offer of about $1 million and didn’t even blink. Under new ownership, Purdue King beat only two horses in the Santa Anita Derby and finished ahead of only one in the Kentucky Derby. Purdue King won five times for Valpredo and went winless in the 14 starts after he was sold.

But it’s still a sellers’ market. Some of the biggest recent advertisements are Lil E. Tee, who was sold three times--for $2,000, $25,000 and $200,000--before he won the Derby in 1992; and the Lukas-trained Thunder Gulch, a Derby winner last year after he was bought as a 2-year-old for $475,000.

Last year, Ernie Paragallo thought he had sold one of his 2-year-olds for $1.4 million. But the Japanese buyer looked askance at X-rays of the horse’s legs after the sale and Paragallo took him back. That colt, Unbridled’s Song, won the $1-million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Belmont Park, and now all you can get on him is 4-1 in one Derby future book in Nevada.

Unbridled’s Song is in training in Florida, at Gulfstream Park, and despite the jinx, Paragallo says that the horse is not for sale. A Breeders’ Cup winner has never won the Derby, in 12 years, and until last year, when Timber Country won the Preakness, a Juvenile winner had never even won a Triple Crown race.

Another bugaboo comes with the Eclipse Award that Maria’s Mon won Thursday. Since Spectacular Bid, in 1979, an Eclipse-winning juvenile has not won the Derby. Maria’s Mon apparently will not even get the chance. The colt’s 2-year-old season ended prematurely, with an ankle that required surgery, and his trainer, Richard Schosberg, said that he won’t make the Derby.

In Nevada, the future-book odds on Maria’s Mon to win the Derby are 13-1. Maybe the linemaker knows something Schosberg doesn’t. Maybe Maria’s Mon will be sold and a new trainer will get him to Churchill Downs. This is horse racing, and there’s another Kentucky Derby. Goofy things happen.

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Horse Racing Notes

Longshots frustrated pick-six bettors at Santa Anita for the third consecutive day, and today’s carryover exceeds $753,000, with track officials estimating that the pool might reach $2 million. . . . In an allowance race for promising 3-year-olds, Alyrob won his second in a row, with the favorite, Prince Of Thieves, finishing sixth. Prince Of Thieves had won by 6 3/4 lengths in his only previous start. . . . Eddie Delahoussaye, who shares the meet riding lead with Corey Nakatani (14 victories apiece), won’t be riding over the weekend, which includes a Monday card. Loula Mae Delahoussaye, the jockey’s 69-year-old mother, died of respiratory failure and will be buried Monday in New Iberia, La.

Today’s San Fernando Stakes includes four horses--Gold And Steel, Helmsman, Tabor and The Key Rainbow--who will be switching from grass to dirt for the first time. . . . Alpride, the only horse to beat Possibly Perfect, the Eclipse Award winner, last year, makes her 1996 debut Sunday in the $125,000 San Gorgonio Handicap at 1 1/8 miles on grass.