DERBY BEFORE THE DERBY

Smiling, trainer Wayne Lukas ticked off the names: Bobby Barnett, Kiaran McLaughlin, Mark Hennig, Randy Bradshaw, Todd Pletcher and Dallas Stewart.

They are the most prominent members of the Lukas Alumni Assn., former assistant trainers to the perennial national purse leader who are fashioning their own careers.

Sometimes, they make Lukas turn the other cheek. Hennig has won the Santa Anita Derby more recently than his mentor, and when the young trainer took Personal Hope to the winner’s circle in 1993, there was a bigger rub: The colt had been bought at auction by Lukas two years before.

There’s another Santa Anita Derby today, and it will be Lukas against one of his former hired hands again. On paper, where races are never run, the snapshot within the big picture is a rank mismatch. Artax, Bradshaw’s strapping colt, is the 2-1 favorite, and Lukas is moon-shooting with Skeaping, whose 30-1 odds on the morning line are even higher than those for Nationalore, a maiden who has run 14 times.

The horses that should be in Artax’s way are Orville N Wilbur’s, trained by Wally Dollase; and Real Quiet and Indian Charlie, two from Bob Baffert’s barn.

At Santa Anita, the barns of Lukas and Bradshaw practically adjoin, and frequently the horsemen will stop to talk. Bradshaw already had a head trainer’s license when he joined Lukas in 1985, and from then until his departure in 1992, he was a versatile aide, eventually running his own division of Lukas horses and managing Lukas’ training center for more than three years.

Bradshaw, 47, didn’t leave Lukas for a head training job; he abandoned the game he grew up with to join some partners in an ambitious tree-planting business in Idaho.

“I had gone about as far as I could with Wayne,” Bradshaw said. “I thought about putting together my own stable, but that would have been the same thing as starting over. You got spoiled with Wayne--working with the top horses, saddling horses in the Kentucky Derby, winning major stakes all over the country--and it would have been tough to start over. I would have gone from all that to a barn filled with cheap claiming horses.”

The tree-planting venture was a success. Turned out there was a big demand for attractive aspens and 50-foot pines. But a year after Bradshaw’s retreat, the phone rang. Gary West had two dozen horses he wanted Bradshaw to train, among them Rockamundo, who had won the Arkansas Derby at 108-1.

So Bradshaw returned on something akin to his own terms. Now he’s ensconced in California with a variety of clients, one of them a big outfit, the Mace Siegel family. Today Bradshaw is running horses in two races worth $1.25 million--Hedonist for the Siegels in the $500,000 Ashland at Keeneland and Artax for Ernie Paragallo in the $750,000 Santa Anita Derby.

Bradshaw is stacked with personal reasons for winning at Santa Anita. Brett Bradshaw, one of his sons, is visiting from Italy, where he’s serving a Mormon mission. Newel Bradshaw, the trainer’s 68-year-old father, has been promised a trip to the Kentucky Derby if Artax makes it to Churchill Downs on May 2. The elder Bradshaw, a career horseman, is semi-retired with a five-horse stable at Turf Paradise in Phoenix.

“It’s almost as important that my dad make the Derby as it is the horse,” Randy Bradshaw said.

An uncle, Lyman Rollins, also contributed to Bradshaw’s education.

“Lyman is a great horseman,” Bradshaw said. “He’s a great judge of a horse. There’s not a guy around who’s won more stakes races with horses that cost under $10,000.”

Part of his apprenticeship was spent galloping horses for clients such as Gene Fullmer at Laurel Brown.

Gene Fullmer? Yes, the former middleweight boxing champion. Laurel Brown? The racetrack in suburban Salt Lake City, but don’t look for it in the pages of the Daily Racing Form. They run thoroughbred and quarter horse races there, and there’s no betting--that anybody will admit to--in Utah.

Bradshaw will not be intimidated by running a horse in a $750,000 race, or even saddling a horse in the Kentucky Derby, if it comes to that.

“Wayne ran a high-profile organization, so I’ve had a lot of practice dealing with the media,” Bradshaw said. “Wayne’s a guy who never gets rattled, and I hope I’ve absorbed some of that. I try not to get too high on any of my horses, because I know there can be letdowns. But if we get [to the Kentucky Derby], and they start playing ‘My Old Kentucky Home,’ you’re not human if you don’t get excited.”

Bradshaw has trained speed-crazy sprinters like Petro D. Jay, who once shared the world record for the fastest six furlongs. He took Urbane, a young filly, from Brian Mayberry, former trainer for the Siegels, and won five stakes with her in 1995-96. In 1995, Bradshaw campaigned Petionville, a colt that finished ahead of only one horse in the Santa Anita Derby. Touring the country with a horse that was a cut below the best, Bradshaw won ancillary derbies in Louisiana and Ohio, Petionville earning more than $700,000.

In only six starts--three wins, two seconds and a third--Artax has earned $341,320 and could move past Petionville with a victory worth $450,000 today. Artax finished second in his only stakes loss, a length behind Real Quiet in the 1 1/16-mile Hollywood Futurity in December. Real Quiet missed by a head when Artax won the San Felipe Stakes at the same distance three weeks ago.

The Santa Anita Derby is a sixteenth of a mile farther.

“Real Quiet’s the horse to beat,” said Bradshaw, who beat Baffert’s horse with a colt named Grady last August in the $571,647 Indian Nations Futurity Cup at Santa Fe, N.M.

Grady is not nominated for the Triple Crown races.

“It shows you how things can change with horses,” Bradshaw said. “Grady’s not within 20 lengths of Real Quiet now.”

Horse Racing Notes

Trainer Randy Bradshaw is running Canyon Crest in today’s $75,000 Berkeley Handicap at Golden Gate Fields. . . . Hanuman Highway, who skipped the Santa Anita Derby, will run next Saturday against Favorite Trick in the $500,000 Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park. David Flores has the mount for trainer Kathy Walsh. Hanuman Highway, an Irish-bred, started his career in England and, in his second start for Walsh, won an allowance race at Santa Anita on March 13.

Fantastic Fellow, previously trained by Wayne Lukas, made his first start for trainer Wally Dollase and won an allowance Friday by two lengths. It was the 4-year-old colt’s first race since he ran eighth in the Hollywood Derby in November. . . . Dollase’s Orville N Wilbur’s probably will try to become the first gate-to-wire winner of the Santa Anita Derby since Winning Colors in 1988.

Hal Earnhardt, who races Indian Charlie today with his new partner, John Gaines, has a daughter named Dream and a son named Derby. Derby Earnhardt, 14, got his name because he was born near the time that his father ran a quarter horse in the Budweiser Derby at Turf Paradise. Earnhardt, who owns car dealerships in Arizona, has another son named Dodge.