Grindstone’s Derby Causes ’97 Stampede

A year ago, Grindstone was coming off knee surgery and hadn’t run a race in seven months. Cobra King was the toast of the 3-year-old division, a colt with an unlimited future. The public liked Cobra King so much in March that he was stamped the favorite, over Unbridled’s Song, in the Florida Derby.

But in May, when it counted, Grindstone put his nose on the finish line at Churchill Downs, just before Cavonnier, and won the Kentucky Derby. Cobra King, the victim of a tendon injury, had already been sent to rehabilitation, his career all but over.

With all that in mind, it’s not difficult to understand why 75 horses have been nominated for the Triple Crown races this year. The price is right--$600 a horse--and almost any one of them can win the Derby.

Look at Grindstone. By early February, he had run only two races, both as a 2-year-old, and had recorded his only victory against maidens.

Grindstone eventually ran three times as a 3-year-old before he got to Louisville, but still such a lightly raced horse--five starts--hadn’t won the Derby since Brokers Tip in 1933.

This is why Wayne Lukas, who won with Grindstone last year and with Thunder Gulch the year before, has nominated 23 of those 375 horses for this year’s Derby, 10 more than the next trainer on the list. Lukas is on the threshold of a preposterous record--three consecutive wins in the Derby--and he wants to have a full magazine when he takes aim in the 123rd running of the race on May 3.

Lukas started 12 horses at Churchill Downs before he won his first Derby, with the filly Winning Colors in 1988. Sometime late in that drought, he said, “We’re still going to win there one of these years, and I’ll tell you something else: Once we win one, we’re going to win another one too.”

There are enough high-profile trainers around to foil him in 1997, many of them here in California. Richard Mandella has nominated 13 of his 3-year-olds. Bob Baffert, who trained Cavonnier a year ago, has nominated 10, and will run Silver Charm, the Del Mar Futurity winner, at Santa Anita on Saturday. Ron McAnally has nominated seven, among them the recent winner Hello and the less-distinguished Mud Route.

In Florida, Nick Zito, a two-time winner of the Derby, has nominated a dozen, one of them Shammy Davis, a colt with a name that could launch a thousand jokes.

“It’s hard to say how good he’ll be,” jockey Jerry Bailey said. “But he won the other day and I liked the way he did it.”

Bailey won last year with Grindstone, and in 1993 he was a partner with Sea Hero in another sneak attack on the Derby.

McAnally will not pick between Hello and Mud Route, but you look at the two horses and the physical difference is striking.

Mud Route is well on his way to maturity, while Hello, who came to McAnally from Europe, seems to have something missing. When Hello stands in his stall, his head barely shows over the top of the protective webbing at the door.

Mud Route, who has coupled an 11-length maiden victory with a smart allowance victory, wades into stakes competition in the San Rafael at Santa Anita on March 2.

One of the things McAnally likes about Mud Route is his unflappable temperament. That’s a horse’s hole card at rowdy Churchill Downs on Derby day. The longshot Gato Del Sol had it in 1982.

“He was so calm that you could have shot off a cannon right next to him and it wouldn’t have fazed him,” said his trainer, Eddie Gregson.

McAnally finished 17th last year with Matty G, while Lukas finished first, third, sixth, 10th and 18th with his five-horse group.

Horse Racing Notes

“There is no reason to say that Golden Eagle’s breeding and racing operation is in danger of being disrupted,” Karl Rubinstein said Thursday. Rubinstein is the deputy conservator of the Golden Eagle Insurance Co., which was taken over last week by the State of California’s Dept. of Insurance. The insurance firm’s majority owner, John Mabee, has been the leading breeder of California-breds for the last nine years and operates a 560-acre farm in northeastern San Diego County.

“The meeting went well and I think we made a little headway,” said Don Driscoll, executive director of the Nevada Pari-Mutuel Assn., in discussing a negotiating session between the Nevada racebooks and California racetracks on Thursday. Because of a dispute over the commissions the tracks are paid, the racebooks have not carried the telecasts of races from Hollywood Park and Santa Anita Park since Nov. 6. The blackout has cost Santa Anita and horse owners an estimated $576,000 since the meet opened on Dec. 26. Driscoll said that negotiations will continue this weekend.