The Race Is On

Having once spent $77,000 at an auction to buy a pig, it was not that much of a stretch for Jim McIngvale to lay out millions in search of a Kentucky Derby winner.

McIngvale, the Houston furniture magnate who parlayed $5,000, an outrageous advertising campaign and the promise of same-day delivery into a $100-million-a-year business, has spent more than $8 million on yearlings the last two years. That’s half what McIngvale invested in a Chuck Norris movie (“Sidekicks”) several years ago and, McIngvale said with a chuckle, “Less than what it would cost me to buy the Houston Rockets.”

Wading right in, McIngvale sent most of his first batch of yearlings to trainer Nick Zito, a two-time winner of the Derby. This year McIngvale has nominated 16 horses to the Triple Crown races, double the number of the next leading stable.

“Mac is in this game for the whole nine yards,” Zito said. “His goal is to eventually have his own farm. He loves our system of being able to get horses to the Derby, and he’s going to be a major force.”

McIngvale, 47, spent as much as $380,000 for a yearling two years ago, but it’s one of his cheapest auction buys that’s stirred Zito’s imagination. Laydown, purchased for $29,000, won the Kentucky Cup Juvenile at Turfway Park as a 2-year-old and last Friday scored his first 3-year-old win, the Lord Avie Stakes at Gulfstream Park.

“I think this colt’s as good as any of them,” Zito said. “We’ll probably run him in the Florida Derby next.”

The $750,000 Florida Derby, to be run at Gulfstream on March 14, is one of at least 36 prep races designed to ready horses for the the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on May 2. Other important stakes are the $600,000 Jim Beam Stakes at Turfway on March 28; the $750,000 Santa Anita Derby on April 4; and three races being run on April 11--the $700,000 Blue Grass at Keeneland, the $500,000 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct and the $500,000 Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park.

For the first time since Secretariat was voted horse of the year in 1972 and swept the Triple Crown--the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes--in 1973, racing has a national champion who was only a 2-year-old. But Favorite Trick, voted 1997 horse of the year after he won all eight of his races, is a lukewarm favorite for the Derby, and his new trainer, Bill Mott, is making no guarantees that the colt will even make it to the starting gate in Louisville.

Since replacing Patrick Byrne, forced to relinquish his horses after he signed a lucrative five-year contract to train exclusively for Frank Stronach, Mott has put only three workouts into Favorite Trick. Instead of getting ready for the Florida Derby, Favorite Trick is expected to run the same day at Gulfstream in the Swale Stakes, a seven-furlong race. Presumably Mott would then run him in the 1 1/8-mile Blue Grass and the 1 1/4-mile Derby. That’s a shoehorn schedule for a horse who’s not bred to win at classic distances.

“To make the Derby, everything has to go just right,” said Joe LaCombe, the principal owner of Favorite Trick in a partnership with Walmac International. “We’ll run him in the Swale and then just see what develops from there.”

Favorite Trick’s sire, Phone Trick, was a crackerjack sprinter who won nine of 10 starts in 1985-86.

“I’m told that [trainer Richard Mandella] was just about ready to stretch out Phone Trick when an injury ended his career,” LaCombe said. “So we never got the chance to find out what he might have done over a distance of ground.”

Between them, trainers Shug McGaughey and Neil Howard have nominated nine horses for the Triple Crown, far less than Zito, but they will be running strong contenders this Saturday at Gulfstream in the Fountain of Youth Stakes. McGaughey will saddle Coronado’s Quest, who has won five of seven starts despite an intractable disposition, and Howard is running Lil’s Lad, winless in two stakes tries as a 2-year-old but a winner of two races by more than 22 lengths this winter.

Another probable for the Fountain of Youth is Cape Town, who made an auspicious debut as a 3-year-old with a half-length win in the Holy Bull Stakes at Gulfstream on Jan. 17. Cape Town races for owner William T. Young and trainer Wayne Lukas, who won the 1996 Kentucky Derby with Grindstone. That was the third Derby win for Lukas, who has also won four Preaknesses and three Belmonts since 1980.

Interestingly, Jerry Bailey, who rode Cape Town in the Holy Bull, has cast his lot with Lil’s Lad in the Fountain of Youth. Bob and Beverly Lewis, who race Silver Charm, last year’s Derby-Preakness winner, recently bought a 10% interest in Lil’s Lad, but one of their trainers, Bob Baffert, sounded remorseful the other day when he said he could have bought 50% of Lil’s Lad last November.

“He’s a fast horse and he keeps running,” Baffert said. “I think he’s definitely the best horse in Florida right now. The people that owned him wanted to sell 50% for $1.5 million just before the Breeders’ Cup. But my owners wanted to buy the whole horse, and I didn’t pursue it because I already had a nice group of 3-year-olds.”

One of those prospects, Tahoe Prospector, won by eight lengths last week at Santa Anita but chipped his knee and won’t run again until summer. Baffert, who just missed with Cavonnier against Grindstone before Silver Charm came along, has three Santa Anita-based Derby candidates in Souvenir Copy, Real Quiet and Pleasant Drive. None of them have won lately, but Baffert was encouraged by Pleasant Drive’s late-running third in the Santa Catalina Stakes, and he has thrown out Real Quiet’s off-track clinker in the Golden Gate Derby in Northern California.

“It’s easy to get Derby fever this time of year,” Baffert said. “I know [trainer Randy Bradshaw] has got it, because he’s got a nice colt [Artax, winner of the Santa Catalina]. But you only go to the Derby if you’ve got the horse. If my horses aren’t ready by then, I don’t mind waiting. There’s life after the Derby. I’ll wait until the Belmont [the Triple Crown windup on June 6] if I have to. That’s the only Triple Crown trophy that the Lewises don’t have on their shelf.”

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Run for the Roses

Important prep races for the Kentucky Derby on May 2:

Saturday: Gulfstream: $200,000 Fountain of Youth, 1 1/16 miles

Sunday: Fair Grounds: $100,000 Risen Star, 1 1/16 miles

March 1: Santa Anita: $200,000 San Rafael, 1 mile

March 7: Bay Meadows: $200,000 El Camino Real Derby, 1 1/16 miles

March 14: Gulfstream: $750,000 Florida Derby, 1 1/8 miles

March 14: Gulfstream: $100,000 Swale, 7 fulongs

March 14: Santa Anita: $250,000 San Felipe, 1 1/16 miles

March 15: Fair Grounds: $500,000 Louisiana Derby, 1 1/16 miles

March 21: Aqueduct: $150,000 Gotham, 1 mile

March 28: Turfway: $600,000 Jim Beam, 1 1/8 miles

April 4: Santa Anita: $750,000 Santa Anita Derby, 1 1/8 miles

April 11: Keeneland: $700,000 Blue Grass, 1 1/8 miles

April 11: Aqueduct: $500,000 Wood Memorial, 1 /18 miles

April 11: Oaklawn: $500,000 Arkansas Derby, 1 /18 miles

April 19: Keeneland: $325,000 Lexington, 1 1/16 miles