Dream Ends for Tincin, but Legacy May Linger

The backside at Churchill Downs is a busy place this week, but outside Stall 18 in Barn 38, all is quiet.

The door to the tack room is firmly shut and padlocked. The stall is empty. The horse and its trainer have fled.

Affixed to a wooden post near the stall is a placard that warns of the danger of fire in the barn area. Too late, it seems. A blaze of controversy already has swept through, one that briefly threatened to engulf Saturday’s 127th Kentucky Derby.

It involved a horse named Tincin, or, as he is derogatorily referred to by some here, Ten Cents.

Trainers and jockeys were divided on the issue. Should he be allowed to run? The horse media, for want of a better term, gave free rein to some pretty harsh criticism.

Columnist Steve Crist of the Daily Racing Form, for instance, was scathing.

He wrote in Sunday’s edition, “The one sure thing about the Kentucky Derby . . . is that the people who are planning to run the maiden Tincin are a disgrace to the sport and have no respect for the race, their horse, or the welfare of other horses and jockeys.

“This isn’t a cute human-interest story of an admirably plucky quest with a charming longshot. It’s about selfish, delusional people mistreating their horse and endangering others.”

That sort of press prompted trainer Steve LaRue to pack up and leave Churchill Downs on Saturday. He took Tincin with him and said in a telephone interview with The Times on Sunday that the colt would not be back until Tuesday night.

Now, it turns out, the bay 3-year-old will not be back at all.

Monday, Churchill Downs announced that Tincin would not run in the Derby because he had developed a cough.

The timing is certainly convenient for Triple Crown Productions, which was embarrassed by the idea of a $10,000 horse without a victory to its name and earnings of only $390 rubbing shoulders with equine millionaires on Derby Day.

Preference for entry in the Kentucky Derby is given to the horses with the most earnings in graded stakes only if more than 20 horses are entered. Otherwise, any 3-year-old is qualified.

LaRue had made no mention of any cough during Sunday’s interview and indeed said that the colt was in top shape.

“The horse is completely sound,” he said.

By Monday, that situation had changed.

“He’s come up with a cough, so he’s out,” LaRue was quoted as saying in a statement released by Churchill Downs.

“We started to take him to the [Ellis Park] track this morning and he coughed five or six times and we put him on antibiotics. . . . I’d cut off my left arm to run him, [but] if you can’t breathe, you can’t run.”

Tincin might be out of the race, but the controversy over his potential participation will linger and probably will result in changes in entry rules for the Derby, and possibly the Preakness and the Belmont.

“I have mixed feelings about it,” trainer Todd Pletcher, who will run Balto’s Star and Invisible Ink on Saturday, said before Tincin’s withdrawal. “I respect the democratic environment that we live in that allows people to more or less do what they want.

“My main concern is for that particular horse’s safety and health, and for everyone else’s in the race. I think it would be a very bitter pill to swallow if that horse impeded your way to the finish line and somehow you were beaten [by] a nose or something and that horse was a reason for it. That would be very difficult to take.”

David Hofmans, who trains Millennium Wind, took a hard-line stance.

“I think it cheapens the race,” he said. “What’s to stop 10 egomaniacs from doing the same thing next year if we don’t have some rules against it? Then you’re going to have a real problem. There needs to be some restrictions.”

Bob Baffert, trainer of Derby favorite Point Given and Congaree, suggested two possible restrictions.

“I think for one thing, a horse should have at least $50,000 in earnings to run in the Derby,” he said. “That would keep a horse like this out of there. Also, they should increase the fees to enter and run [from $30,000] to $50,000.”

Wayne Lukas, a four-time Derby winner, foresees another rule.

“I think that they’ll probably [change] the rule book to eliminate maidens in the future,” he said.

Pat Day, who won the Derby aboard Lil E. Tee in 1992, felt a twinge of sadness for LaRue and Tincin’s owners, LaRue’s wife, Tina, and Cynthia Clements, but said the race’s prestige should be considered.

“It’s everybody’s dream to participate in a race like this, to be in a Kentucky Derby,” he said. “But I would wish that people would have respect for the race and what it stands for.

“I understand that maybe they’ve been in the game a long time and that they might feel that they’ll never get another opportunity.”

LaRue, 45, had been waiting a long time for his opportunity. On Sunday, he talked about having run around the Churchill Downs track on foot as a boy and of having watched every Derby since he was 16.

He believed, he said, in his horse and in his dream.

“It’s very ambitious,” he said. “It’s a little bit crazy. I understand that [but] we believe in the colt.”

His affection for the horse was evident.

“He’s a big old baby,” said LaRue, who has seven other horses. “He loves peppermints. He’s never won a race but he’s never caused any problems for anybody.

“If the colt was a rogue and he caused problems, I’d say, ‘I’m coming out of here, I don’t have a right to be here because this colt could do something to hurt somebody.’ But he hasn’t done nothing.”

And the trainer said something else too.

Asked if he would consider selling the horse, should an offer be forthcoming, he replied:

“If somebody’s interested in him, we’ll definitely listen to anything they’ve got to say.”