Cobra King’s Road to Derby a Bit Unusual

What Cobra King will be asked to do flies in the face of Kentucky Derby tradition, but owner Gary Biszantz and trainer Mike Puype are wedded to their plan. The next-to-last installment in this unusual undertaking begins today, when their gifted 3-year-old colt faces eight rivals in the $500,000 Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park.

Assuming Cobra King runs well and returns sound from today’s 1 1/8-mile test, he will be shipped in about a week to Churchill Downs to prepare for the Kentucky Derby on May 4. But the public will not see him again until Derby day. And should Cobra King win the Kentucky Derby this way, he will be the most unconventional winner of the roses in 40 years.

Cobra King’s only other race this year was a strong effort, a 1 3/4-length victory over Editor’s Note in the 1 1/16-mile Holy Bull Stakes at Gulfstream on Jan. 20. The last horse to win the Kentucky Derby after only two preps as a 3-year-old was Sunny’s Halo in 1983. The last horse to win the Derby without a prep race in April was Needles in 1956.

Needles’ last race before the Kentucky Derby was a victory in the Florida Derby, run that year on March 24, about a week later than today’s running. The 1956 Kentucky Derby was run on May 5, which meant that Needles had 41 days between races. After today, Cobra King will have a 48-day gap before the Derby.

“If a trainer like Charlie Whittingham or Woody Stephens was trying to do this, you wouldn’t think much about it,” said John Perrotta, the former racing manager for Robert Brennan’s Due Process Stable. “But with anybody less than that, you have to wonder. Gary’s been in the business a long time [as an owner], and has always seemed to know what he’s doing. But the trainer [the 29-year-old Puype] is new to all this.”

The Arizona-reared Puype, who didn’t know until recently whether Churchill Downs was located in Lexington, Ky., or Louisville, and Biszantz are in concert about their two-races-before-the-Derby strategy. The day before Biszantz traveled here from California, Puype outlined the plan at his Gulfstream barn. The next day, Biszantz arrived and, out of Puype’s earshot, repeated what his trainer had said, virtually verbatim.

“Our horse does his best when his races are spaced out,” Biszantz said Friday. “Just because the race is the Kentucky Derby is no reason to vary from the plan that we’ve had for some time. Look at all the horses that get to the Derby after being over-raced, and then you don’t hear of many of them again. I don’t think we deserve any criticism until after we see how our plan works. Look how he ran in the Holy Bull off a layoff. When we ran him three times at Del Mar last summer, he wasn’t the same horse in the third race.”

Cobra King won the Holy Bull two months after his previous start, which was the Hollywood Prevue Breeders’ Cup Stakes. Cobra King ran three times during the seven-week Del Mar season, but after winning the first two he was fourth--his worst finish--as the 7-10 favorite in the Del Mar Futurity. The colt hasn’t lost since and is the 9-5 favorite on the Florida Derby’s morning line. The field, in post-position order, consists of Built For Pleasure, Cobra King, Skip Away, Louis Quatorze, Tour’s Big Red, Unbridled’s Song, Editor’s Note, Ensign Ray and Appealing Skier.

Puype said that Chris McCarron, Cobra King’s jockey for the last three races and the rider with the assignment again today, was surprised that the colt was fit enough to handle two turns as easily as he did in the Holy Bull.

“I’m very confident going into this race,” Puype said. “He could always bleed, or get into traffic trouble, but those are things beyond our control. Otherwise, based on how he’s trained, I won’t be able to offer one excuse after this race. If he ran a bad race, it would really crush me.”

This will be Cobra King’s eighth start, two more races than Unbridled’s Song, winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile in October and the second choice at 2-1 for the Florida Derby. Unbridled’s Song has taken the well-traveled route to the Florida Derby, running second in both the Hutcheson and the Fountain of Youth this winter at Gulfstream, and his trainer, Jim Ryerson, will probably run him in the Wood Memorial, at Aqueduct on April 13, before going on to Kentucky.

Neither Unbridled’s Song nor Cobra King has ever run as far as the Florida Derby distance, and the Kentucky Derby distance of 1 1/4 miles is something else again.

After Cobra King’s early arrival at Churchill Downs, Puype plans to bring him up to the Derby on works alone. Familiarity with the track can be a plus for a horse, but there can be negatives too. The classic example is Skywalker, who won the Santa Anita Derby in 1985 and was quickly sent to Kentucky, almost four weeks before the race. Skywalker was injured while running sixth in the Derby.

“The Churchill track was rock-hard to train over that year,” said Michael Whittingham, Skywalker’s trainer. “I couldn’t have done worse by my horse if I’d gone into his stall every day and hit him in the legs with a hammer.”

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Horse Racing Notes

Mike Smith, who rides Unbridled’s Song today, has won the Florida Derby each of the last two years, with Thunder Gulch and Holy Bull. . . . The only jockey to win the race three consecutive times has been Bill Hartack, with Gen. Duke, Tim Tam and Easy Spur in the late 1950s. . . . In other races for Kentucky Derby hopefuls on today’s Gulfstream card, Roar is favored in the Swale Stakes and Diligence is expected to win the Unbridled.