Starting With Saturday’s $1 Million Santa Anita Derby, a Promising Class of Three-Year-Olds Will Take Aim at Horse Racing’s...

Charlie Whittingham would like this. It is early April, exactly a month to the day that Churchill Downs will run the 126th Kentucky Derby, and there has been no widespread trashing of the crop of 3-year-olds that will make up the field.

When he was alive, forging a Hall of Fame career that included Derby wins at ages 73 and 76 with Ferdinand and Sunday Silence, Whittingham abhorred the annual denigration of the breed. “Every year,” Whittingham said more than once, “they start saying that the 3-year-olds aren’t much. Then they run the races, and everybody’s tune changes.”

They’re about ready to run the final preps for the Kentucky Derby, and Derby addicts can hardly wait. Saturday’s Santa Anita Derby, which at $1 million is almost as rich as the Kentucky Derby, has a solid top-to-bottom field with no real throw-outs; a week from Saturday, the Blue Grass Stakes, the Wood Memorial and the Arkansas Derby will all be run within hours of one another, and they, too, are loaded with legitimate contenders.

The campaigning for this year’s Kentucky Derby has been so intense that trainers Bob Baffert and Nick Zito, who won the race a combined four times in the 1990s, are struggling just to be represented in Louisville May 6. Baffert, second with Cavonnier in his first Derby, in 1996, won with Silver Charm and Real Quiet the next two years and was fourth and fifth last year with General Challenge and Excellent Meeting, but this year but hasn’t had a victory in a Derby prep this year. If he’s to go into the Kentucky Derby with any confidence, Baffert needs a big effort in the Santa Anita Derby from Captain Steve, who’s winless since his first-place finish in the Hollywood Futurity almost four months ago.

Zito, winner of the Derby with Strike The Gold in 1991 and Go For Gin in 1994, continued to send horses to the race for the rest of the decade, but this year he may be only a spectator. Zito’s No. 1 hope, Greenwood Lake, broke his left front ankle less than a week before the Florida Derby. Another Zito trainee, Rollin With Nolan, wasn’t tested in stakes company until two weeks ago, and after a third-place finish in the Turfway Spiral, he’ll need to improve dramatically in the Blue Grass to rate much of a chance in the Derby.

While Baffert and Zito have been relegated to the fringe, there’s one Derby regular who’s banging on the Churchill Downs door as loud as ever. Wayne Lukas won his fourth Derby last year with the unlikely Charismatic, an escapee from the claiming ranks. Since 1981, three years after he left the quarter horse business, Lukas has started a record 35 horses in the Derby. He has had at least one starter in each of those 19 years.

This year, Lukas will take shots in five remaining prep races, starting with the filly Surfside in the Santa Anita Derby. On April 15, Lukas will have High Yield in the Blue Grass at Keeneland, Exchange Rate in the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct and True Confidence in the Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park. On April 22, Lukas is expected to run Commendable in the Coolmore Lexington Stakes at Keeneland. Commendable is not even an afterthought on most lists of Derby contenders, but Lukas and the colt’s owners, Bob and Beverly Lewis, are eyeing a sequel. Their Charismatic hadn’t run first in 1999 until he won the Lexington, and two weeks later he won the Derby.

On the future-book betting line at the Stardust in Las Vegas, High Yield, at 5-1, is the shortest price among Lukas’ horses, but that colt, winner of the Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream Park and second by a head to Hal’s Hope in the Florida Derby three weeks later, had trouble winning in California, which is capable of producing the Derby winner for the fourth consecutive year. Topping the Stardust’s line, at 3-1, is Fusaichi Pegasus, who left Hollywood Park Wednesday, sent by plane to New York for an expected start in the Wood Memorial. The undefeated War Chant, at 7-2 the second choice in the future book, will be favored in the Santa Anita Derby.

Fusaichi Pegasus, purchased as a yearling by Tokyo businessman Fusao Sekiguchi, and War Chant are trained by Neil Drysdale, a self-contained, English-born horseman who worked under Whittingham in the early 1970s. Drysdale, 53, has carved out a career that has earned him a spot on the Racing Hall of Fame ballot for the second consecutive year, but his one shot at the Kentucky Derby turned to ashes when A.P. Indy, the 1992 Santa Anita Derby winner, was scratched because of a foot injury on the morning of the race.

Drysdale is in an uncommon position, a trainer who will have the favorites in the Santa Anita Derby and the Wood. Favorites have won those races frequently, but the Kentucky Derby is something else again. Incredibly, the favorite hasn’t won the Derby in 20 years.

“I was thinking about that the other day,” Drysdale said this week, “and I was trying to recollect just when it was that a favorite last won the Derby.”

Told that it was Spectacular Bid, in 1979, Drysdale said:

“Well, then, maybe I’m not in such an enviable position. It’s the old question, isn’t it, about the glass being half-empty or half-full? I’d like to say that my glass is half-full for now. But it’s difficult to compare horses until they’ve run against each other.”

And sometimes that doesn’t happen until the Kentucky Derby, when young, undeveloped 3-year-olds will be asked to carry 126 pounds, go 1 1/4 miles, run in front of a crowd well in excess of 100,000 and risk the perils endemic to a large field. It’s a fact of life that the best horse doesn’t always win the Derby. From 1991 through 1996, only one Derby winner was also voted best 3-year-old at the end of the year. The last horse to win the Triple Crown was Affirmed in 1978.

When Lukas shipped High Yield to Florida early in the year, handicappers looked to the Gulfstream Park races as an East-West testing ground. But no consensus developed; Gulfstream’s surface bias was detrimental to late-running horses, and the Florida contingent as a whole was an undistinguished lot. For High Yield and Hal’s Hope, the Florida Derby was a rerun of the Fountain of Youth, but in reverse order, and the Louisiana Derby, run at the Fair Grounds the next day, has been perceived as the stronger prep, with Mighty sweeping past More Than Ready and Captain Steve in the stretch.

The Wood has become an eye-catcher because of Drysdale opting to run Fusaichi Pegasus in New York, but the best pre-Derby litmus test is the Blue Grass, which has drawn the 1-2 finishers from the Florida and Louisiana derbies. The sentimental choice at Keeneland will be Hal’s Hope, named after Harold Rose and bred, owned and trained by the 88-year-old horseman who’s had only one Kentucky Derby starter. That was Rexson’s Hope, who ran 10th in 1984, when his trainer was a mere 72. Hal’s Hope may still get to this Derby, but he would seem to be overmatched at Keeneland, where the bar has been raised and where natural speed may not be the order of the day.

“If I was going to get beat by anybody, I would just as soon that it be him,” Lukas said, referring to Rose after Hal’s Hope outran High Yield in the Florida Derby. To Rose’s credit, he has kept Hal’s Hope’s regular jockey, the little-known Roger Velez, while many of the Derby contenders have been caught up in a musical chairs of riding assignments. Jerry Bailey, for example, has ridden six of the Derby contenders, and for the Santa Anita Derby he has left Anees to be reunited with War Chant, who won the first of his four races with Bailey aboard.

The mount on War Chant became available because his owner, Irv Cowan, didn’t want to share Kent Desormeaux with Drysdale’s other colt, Fusaichi Pegasus. If both horses reach the Kentucky Derby, Desormeaux would have been faced with a choice, and Cowan is more comfortable knowing Bailey can get reacquainted with his horse on Saturday.

With Bailey gone, Corey Nakatani was hired to ride Anees, who was ridden to victory by Gary Stevens, since retired, in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile last year.

“When Bailey came off, I was disappointed,” said Alex Hassinger Jr., who trains Anees. But [rider switches] are something you deal with every day, with all your horses. When something like this happens, you can’t dwell on it, you just move on.”

Bailey, a two-time winner of the Derby, last year rode Worldly Manner, who battled for the lead into the head of the stretch before finishing seventh. Worldly Manner represented Sheik Mohammed’s Godolphin Racing, the Dubai juggernaut that won 18 major races around the world last year. The sheik, who is Dubai’s crown prince, badly wants to add the Kentucky Derby to his treasure chest, and has at least three prospects this year, including Chief Seattle, who was second to Anees in the Breeders’ Cup but is unraced since the sheik bought him and sent him to Dubai. More likely to show up at Churchill Downs are the lightly raced China Visit and Curule, who were late nominees for the Triple Crown series after they ran first and third, respectively, in the United Arab Emirates Derby in Dubai on March 25.

China Visit has run only twice, winning by a combined 12-plus lengths, but the quality of those fields is suspect and unlike Worldly Manner has no U.S. racing experience. His only start between now and the Derby is expected to be a trial race in Dubai. That would leave him with an earnings problem, since the Derby field is determined by graded-race purse money if more than 20 horses are entered. Twenty horses were entered last year, and there could be another overflow at entry time this year.

Aside to Charlie Whittingham, wherever you are: They’ve got quality as well as quantity this time.

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KENTUCKY DERBY PREP RACES

Col 1: Date Col 2: Race Col 3: Track Col 4: Distance Col 5: Purse -Col 1: Saturday Col 2: Santa Anita Derby Col 3: Santa Anita Col 4: 1 1/8 miles Col 5: $1 million -Col 1: Saturday Col 2: Flamingo Col 3: Gulfstream Park Col 4: 1 1/8 miles Col 5: $250,000 -Col 1: April 15 Col 2: Blue Grass Col 3: Keeneland Col 4: 1 1/8 miles Col 5: $750,000 -Col 1: April 15 Col 2: Wood Memorial Col 3: Aqueduct Col 4: 1 1/8 miles Col 5: $750,000 -Col 1: April 15 Col 2: Arkansas Derby Col 3: Oaklawn Park Col 4: 1 1/8 miles Col 5: $500,000 -Col 1: April 15 Col 2: California Derby Col 3: Golden Gate Fields Col 4: 1 1/8 miles Col 5: $250,000 -Col 1: April 22 Col 2: Lexington Col 3: Keeneland Col 4: 1 1/16 miles Col 5: $325,000 -Col 1: April 22 Col 2: Lone Star Derby Col 3: Lone Star Park Col 4: 1 1/16 miles Col 5: $300,000 -ET

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TRIPLE CROWN RACES

May 6: Kentucky Derby

May 20: Preakness

June 10: Belmont

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CHRISTINE’S TOP 3-YEAR-OLDS

1. Fusaichi Pegasus

2. High Yield

3. The Deputy

4. War Chant

5. Mighty