Derby Is Likely to Produce Winner With Staying Power

What this decade needs is a corker of a Kentucky Derby. This year, Churchill Downs will have the horses that are capable of delivering.

It’s about time. The Derby is always the Derby, and the finish in Louisville is prepackaged not to be boring, but so far the 1990s have produced a group of easily forgotten Derby winners.

Except for Unbridled, who won the Derby as well as the Breeders’ Cup Classic in 1990, and Thunder Gulch, who won the Derby and the Belmont Stakes in 1995, the march of the decade’s other Derby winners has been inexorably toward oblivion.

Think about it: Of the last seven Derby winners, only Unbridled and Thunder Gulch have been voted 3-year-old champions at the end of the year. Thunder Gulch is the only horse in the group to have won one of the other Triple Crown races. Among the five other Derby winners from the 1990s is Go For Gin, who was first at Churchill in 1994, then winless the rest of his life. Grindstone, last year’s Derby winner, didn’t even run again. He emerged from the race with a chipped knee and was retired five days later, when the roses they’d thrown across his withers were still doing fine.

Strike The Gold went on a seven-race losing streak after winning the 1991 Derby. He lost five more to start his 4-year-old season and finished his career with only two victories in 20 post-Derby starts.

Lil E. Tee, the 1992 Derby winner, also did poorly after that, winning only one stakes, a minor handicap at Oaklawn Park. Sea Hero won the Travers at Saratoga, three months after his Derby win in 1993, but he still will be remembered as a Derby happenstance, a colt who ran his best possible race and got his best possible trip--and ride--on the first Saturday of May.

This year, the 1990s blahs may finally be cast aside. Minutes after dismounting from Free House after he had won the Santa Anita Derby, Kent Desormeaux said, “This is a Thunder Gulch kind of horse.” Significantly, Desormeaux won’t even be riding Free House in the Kentucky Derby. His horse on May 3 will be Pacificbounty, a strong third-place finisher in the Arkansas Derby despite suffering a minor hoof injury at the start of the race.

The leaders of the division--Captain Bodgit, Pulpit, Crypto Star, Free House and Silver Charm--are widely known. They are solid horses, a formidable group, and even the colts immediately in their wake are not to be belittled.

Pacificbounty is part of that middle echelon, a good horse in the hands of a good horseman, trainer Walter Greenman. Another veteran conditioner, John Tammaro, has a colt on a four-race winning streak, and if Concerto wins as expected in the Federico Tesio Stakes at Pimlico on Saturday, he’ll also arrive in Louisville under a full head of steam.

These 3-year-olds have a chance to be the deepest collection of Derby horses of this decade. The going is so imposing that trainer Shug McGaughey, who finished second to Captain Bodgit with Accelerator in the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct, is still on the Derby fence. And there are not many 3-year-olds out there better bred than Accelerator. On the male side, he comes from A.P. Indy and Seattle Slew, who won the horse-of-the-year title 15 years apart, and his dam, Get Lucky, is a Mr. Prospector mare.

Captain Bodgit, running the third-fastest Wood, was never threatened by Accelerator. He has an ugly left foreleg that makes you fear that every race could be his last, but as long as he’s sound, he’ll take a lot of beating in Kentucky. His camp has the right to be cheeky.

“You hate to say this this early but he should like the Belmont distance [1 1/2 miles] even more than he will the Derby [1 1/4 miles],” said Barry Irwin, who manages the Team Valor syndicate that races Captain Bodgit.

Gary Capuano, who trains Captain Bodgit, watched a tape of the Santa Anita Derby and mused about what might have been. It wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch for Capuano to be training both Captain Bodgit and Silver Charm for this Derby.

Silver Charm lost by a head to Free House at Santa Anita, after running the fastest opening mile in the history of the race.

“I love Silver Charm,” Capuano said. “When he was sold, he was the only horse at the sale that I liked. He went for $100,000, and I didn’t have the OK to go that high. I dropped out at $60,000. He would have given me some 1-2 punch, wouldn’t he?”

There are enough good horses around to make some people dream about the first Triple Crown champion since Affirmed in 1978. Beware, though, that the Catch-22 might be at work: The better the bunch, the tougher the task.

But let the races begin. The Triple Crown ought to be a lot of fun this year.

Horse Racing Notes

Lucky Lionel, running on dirt for the first time, ran 6 1/2 furlongs in 1:13 4/5 Thursday, breaking the track record at Santa Anita. The old record of 1:14 was shared by three horses, most recently On The Line in 1989. Trained by Bobby Frankel, Lucky Lionel was ridden by Corey Nakatani. . . . Concerto is 3-5 on the morning line for the Tesio, which drew a field of eight. His only defeat in the last seven starts was by three-quarters of a length to Captain Bodgit in last year’s Laurel Futurity. . . . Stolen Gold, third in the Blue Grass, suffered a broken knee and will be out for about four months. Deputy Commander, fifth in the Arkansas Derby, will skip the Kentucky Derby and be pointed for the Preakness at Pimlico on May 17, with a prep race in between. . . . Windsharp, 122 pounds, is the high weight for Saturday’s $300,000 Santa Barbara Handicap at Santa Anita. . . . The 142-date mixed-breed season opens at Los Alamitos tonight. Post time is 7:15 for the 10-race card. . . . Ed Allred, the owner of Los Alamitos, has bought 40% of Ruidoso Downs in Ruidoso, N.M., from R.D. Hubbard.