For a Hunch Bet, Go See Cal-Bred

You can set your sundial by it: Every 40 years, a horse bred in California wins the Kentucky Derby.

In 1922, Morvich, a lazy colt with crooked legs, was the first California-bred to win the Derby. Morvich, undefeated in 11 starts as a 2-year-old, made it an even dozen in the Derby, then never won another race.

In 1962, Decidedly, a gray son of ’54 Derby winner Determine, had never won a stakes race, but he copied his sire with an unexpected victory at Churchill Downs.

Between Morvich and Decidedly, Swaps, in 1955, was the only other Cal-bred to win the Derby.

If California’s 40-year thing holds, Lusty Latin, a former claiming horse and a gray like Decidedly, will deliver a shocker Saturday in the 128th Derby.

A month ago, Lusty Latin was third in the Santa Anita Derby, three lengths behind Came Home, but the son of El Prado and Scarlet Ann has won only twice in 11 starts and is 30-1 on the Derby’s morning line. He will be the 41st Cal-bred in the race since Decidedly won. The best Cal-bred finishes since Decidedly’s victory have been seconds by Hill Rise in 1964, Rumbo in 1980, Best Pal in 1991 and Cavonnier in 1996.

Fifteen minutes after Lusty Latin’s third-place finish at 47-1 in the Santa Anita Derby, Joey Platts, who owns the horse with his wife Wendy, said that Team Valor had called with a feeler to buy.

“I told them we weren’t interested,” said Platts, a 40-year-old construction executive from Lyman, Wyo. “We hadn’t even had time to party yet.”

Team Valor appeared to have a horse in the Derby, anyway, with Windward Passage, but Danthebluegrassman, an entry-time afterthought for trainer Bob Baffert on Wednesday, knocked the Valor runner out of the field.

The week after the Santa Anita Derby, when Lusty Latin earned $90,000, enough for him to qualify for the Kentucky Derby, Platts’ phone kept ringing. Madeleine Paulson, the widow of Allen Paulson, the owner of two-time horse-of-the-year Cigar, said she was interested, and there also were reports that Baffert’s main client, Prince Ahmed Salman, had taken a sniff. Salman wound up buying War Emblem, the Illinois Derby winner, and Baffert will saddle him and Danthebluegrassman on Saturday.

“There must have been 10 or 15 inquiries,” Platts said. “Some of them were kind of interesting. A man from New York wanted to buy one one-third of the horse. He said that the horse could run in my colors in the Derby if he ran in his colors in the Belmont. That was asking a lot for just 33%.”

Trainer Jeff Mullins, who claimed Lusty Latin for $62,500 after the colt had finished second at Hollywood Park on Nov. 29, said that Platts could have sold the horse for $1.5 million.

“The only way we might have considered selling was if we would have kept 50.1%,” Platts said. “But all [of the potential buyers] wanted a majority. They all wanted to switch trainers, and would have insisted on a different jockey. We didn’t want to give up our first chance at the Derby, and deprive ourselves of the chance to live the Derby dream. And I wasn’t going to reach in and pull the heart out of Glenn Corbett and throw it on the ground.”

Corbett, 36, a former high school bronco rider, has ridden Lusty Latin in his last four races, finishing third three times and winning something called the Rattlesnake Stakes at Turf Paradise in Phoenix. Corbett, who splits his year between Turf Paradise and Prairie Meadows in Iowa, has never ridden in a Derby. The day of Spend A Buck’s Derby win in 1985, Corbett was in racing’s hinterlands at Penn National, riding the first race of his career.

Although other Derby-hunting jockeys were hovering, Platts and Mullins refused to copy trainer Ken McPeek, who jettisoned Tony D’Amico, another rider with no Derby experience, for Edgar Prado when Harlan’s Holiday, Saturday’s favorite, lost consecutive races early in the year.

McPeek’s switch was a business decision, in a big-bucks business, and he has averted much criticism. At Derby time, with top jockeys wheeling and dealing to ride horses that will get them into the race, the decision by Platts and Mullins to retain Corbett is the exception. But then most things about Lusty Latin are exceptions.

For one thing, horses rarely emerge from claiming races to have a shot at the Derby, although Charismatic, the 1999 winner, raced twice in $62,500 claimers without being claimed.

On the day Mullins claimed Lusty Latin, he was looking at another horse in the same race, but he decided to buy his eventual Derby starter because Lusty Latin had run fifth in the California Cup Juvenile, in which Yougottawanna and Officer finished 1-2. Yougottawanna was a Derby possible before he was injured and Officer, before his bubble burst, was one of Baffert’s contenders.

Mullins, who claimed Lusty Latin away from trainer Ed Moger Jr., said that the next day Moger called him, offering to buy the horse back for $85,000. That would have made for a 26% profit in less than 24 hours, not a bad turn-around for the horse game, but Mullins resisted, even though the Kentucky Derby was hardly on his radar then. Now it’s the only thing on the screen.

After the disappointment caused by Windward Passage’s failure to qualify for the Kentucky Derby, Team Valor and trainer Steve Asmussen won Thursday’s $100,000 La Troienne Stakes for 3-year-old fillies with Cashier’s Dream, who covered seven furlongs in 1:244/5 on a sloppy track and beat the Baffert-trained Shameful by a head. Cashier’s Dream, ridden by Donnie Meche, paid $3.40 after winning for the fifth time in seven starts.

Before the race, Barry Irwin, president of Team Valor, distanced himself from remarks made by Bob Lively, one of the owners of Windward Passage. Lively was highly critical of Baffert for running Danthebluegrassman and costing Windward Passage a spot in the race.

“I have no problem with Baffert,” Irwin said. “He made the decision based on horsemanship. His horse didn’t run well at Santa Anita, but he loves Churchill Downs and would seem to deserve a shot. There’s no bad blood between me and Baffert. My main problem with the draw is the [ESPN] TV show. You’re required to enter the Derby at 10 o’clock in the morning, and then they don’t go on the air to draw until seven hours later. The whole show is stupid. It’s contrived and it’s boring, and a few years ago it took a guy who loved racing, [sportscaster] Chris Lincoln, and ruined his life because he was blamed for a mix-up during the draw. They ought to go back to when they had a public draw at 10 in the morning, the same time you were required to enter your horse.”

Lonnie Meche, 10 minutes younger than his twin brother Donnie, rode Repository to victory in the $100,000 Mamzelle Stakes.... Sunday Break, another horse left out of the Derby because of a purse shortage, will run in the Preakness on May 18, providing trainer Neil Drysdale’s colt can qualify there. Pimlico restricts the Preakness to 14 horses, and although that many haven’t run since 1992, early estimates indicate an overflow of entries this time. Drysdale said that if Sunday Break were excluded from the Preakness, he’d run in the Peter Pan at Belmont Park on May 25. Ostensibly, that would be a prep for the Belmont Stakes on June 8.