Stevens Has Found They Don’t Play Favorites

A day-by-day look at Bob Baffert’s barn leading to Saturday’s race, in which his two horses, Point Given and Congaree, are the leading contenders

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Security at ancient Churchill Downs is either very good or very bad. Perhaps it’s in the eyes of the beholder.

Thursday, two days before the 127th running of the Kentucky Derby, security here was tight, as Gary Stevens, who only rides Point Given, trainer Bob Baffert’s 9-5 favorite in Saturday’s Derby, found out.

Stevens is usually punctual but he was more than half an hour late for a media session in the press box. Stevens wanted everybody there to know that Churchill Downs security was to blame.

“I was here [half an hour early],” he said. “I tried to cut through the paddock to save a little time, but the guard stopped me because I didn’t have a pass. It was also something about having a Pepsi bottle, which had the cap on. Anyway, I told him who I was. He said he didn’t care, although it wasn’t exactly in that language. It was unfortunate, but I guess that’s the way it is Derby week.”

That was Stevens’ second surprise of the week. On Tuesday, after finishing on the back side, the three-time Derby winner drove around to the front and, just like any other horseplayer, had to pay $10 to park.

That sort of thing has happened before, to others. On Derby day 1996, for instance, Russell Baze, the riding star from Northern California, was about five hours from climbing aboard his first Derby mount. A friend, Bob Benoit, gave him a ride from the hotel to the track, and tried to drop him near the jockeys’ room.

“You can’t go over there,” a guard said.

“But this guy’s riding in the Derby,” Benoit said.

“If he’s riding in the Derby, then he’s fit enough to walk from here,” the guard said.

And that’s what Baze did, before finishing 14th on Semoran for Baffert.

For Stevens, his problems with security are an extension of what has been a tough year on the road. In his career, he has had extended riding stops in Hong Kong and England, so he is a seasoned traveler. Yet recently in Arkansas--passport not required--he found trouble. Scheduled to ride at Oaklawn Park, Stevens flew in to Little Rock, about 55 miles from the track. At the rental-car counter, he discovered that his driver’s license had expired. A sheepish Stevens cabbed it to Oaklawn.

Come 3:07 p.m. (PDT) Saturday, Stevens will be hoping for an uneventful trip with Point Given, although the colt’s post-position draw--outside in a 17-horse field--has caused a few supporters to jump off the bandwagon.

“Post position doesn’t make any difference in this race,” Baffert said, and recent runnings support that statement. “As long as you’ve got a free-running horse, breaking from the outside should be no problem.”

The first time Stevens rode Point Given, when another couple of yards of real estate would have turned a narrow loss to Macho Uno into a victory in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs in November, Stevens was so taken by the huge colt that he said on national television, “I don’t have to look any further for my Derby horse.”

Stevens, 38, said here that these are two of his recent regrets: making that proclamation and announcing his “retirement” on opening day at Santa Anita, the day after Christmas, in 1999.

His competitive juices bubbling, desperate to ride good horses in big races again and his arthritic knees less painful, he tossed aside a possible training career by returning to action last Oct. 4 at Santa Anita.

Earlier on the day Point Given just missed against Macho Uno, Stevens had won his eighth Breeders’ Cup race, riding War Chant to victory in the Mile at Churchill.

“That thing I said about Point Given probably cost me a lot of mounts in the Derby prep races this year,” Stevens said. “I should have kept my mouth shut, because after I said that, nobody wanted to put me on their Derby hope. Everybody knew how I felt about Point Given.

“On the other thing, it would have been better to say that I was taking an extended rest.”

A horse elixir has eased much of the knee pain that Stevens endured for years. Twice a day, he takes a substance called GLC, which comes in powder form, and mixes it with water. It reduces the inflammation and enables him to ride, if not as regularly as before, at least in the many stakes races he’s usually in demand for.

“I can’t ride seven horses a day five days a week anymore,” Stevens said. “I have to restrict myself. But if I’m not 100%, I’m not going to go out there.”

In three months of riding last year, Stevens rode horses that earned $3.1 million. So far this year, his purse total is $3.2 million. Elected to the Racing Hall of Fame in 1997, Stevens’ totals are more than 4,500 wins and $193 million in purses.

Of that purse total, Point Given, with Stevens on his back, has generated about $1 million. The colt is a son of Thunder Gulch, who won the Derby with Stevens aboard in 1995. Twelve Derby winners have sired Derby winners, but a win by Point Given on Saturday would make Stevens the first jockey to ride a Derby winner and the Derby-winning son of that Derby winner.

En route here from California, Stevens had a layover in St. Louis. He and Baffert had time to talk over the phone, and Baffert said, “Your colt has really been doing very well here. You’re going to be well armed.”

Many think that racing luck--actually the lack of it--is the only thing that can derail Point Given in the Derby. Horses have routinely won the Derby from the auxiliary gate--posts 15 and higher--in recent years, but the last horse breaking from the extreme outside to win the race was Majestic Prince in 1969, and only eight horses ran that time.

“I’m looking for a clean break,” Stevens said. “Things have a tendency to sort themselves out early in the Derby, and the run to the first turn is very important.”

Recent months have been a good-news, bad-news amalgam for Stevens. He may be riding in high style again, but his comeback has been tempered by the death of Chris Antley, his good friend and rival jockey, and two death threats were delivered to Stevens at the jockeys’ rooms at Hollywood Park and Santa Anita.

“I miss Chris,” Stevens said. “He was the most talented guy I’ve ever ridden with. I see his empty locker back in California and it hurts. But I accept the reports [of drug-related accidental death]. You just have to say to yourself that life goes on. You can’t linger in the past. It’s important to have a clear mind when you ride horses.”