Louisville Now 19-Horse Town

This is the 128th Kentucky Derby in a nutshell: Eighteen pundits for the Daily Racing Form have rapped in, and none of them likes Harlan’s Holiday, the Blue Grass and Florida Derby winner and the 9-2 morning-line favorite.

In other words, today’s Derby is a harum-scarum affair. Talk to 10 clockers and you get 11 opinions. One of them wanted to have it both ways.

In many Derbies, there might be half a dozen horses that figure, but this one has few throw-outs. Shucks, the favorite is an Ohio-bred, and the field includes a New York-bred, Private Emblem, and a California-bred, Lusty Latin, that actually have chances. Horses from those jurisdictions are usually better off staying home.

The Derby enigma got slightly easier Friday morning, when Buddha, winner of the Wood Memorial and co-second choice with Santa Anita Derby winner Came Home at 5-1, was scratched because of a bruised foot, but there still are 19 horses to sort out. Post time at Churchill Downs is 3:04 p.m., Los Angeles time. Attendance will be well over 100,000, but perhaps smaller than recent years because of sluggish post-Sept. 11 travel habits and warnings about high security at the track.

A worst-case scenario for Kentucky breeders, who have accounted for a record 96 Derby winners, and seven of the last eight, would be if Harlan’s Holiday and Easy Grades complete a 1-2 exacta. Harlan’s Holiday’s Ohio lineage is considered the wrong side of the tracks, and Easy Grades, while bred in Kentucky, is a gelding, a horse with no breeding future.

But if you like Came Home a lot, you have to like Easy Grades a little, because he was second, 21/4 lengths behind Came Home, in the Santa Anita Derby, even though his jockey that day, Gary Stevens, had trouble steering because of a bollixed bridle. Easy Grades will be ridden today by Jorge Chavez.

As an unraced 2-year-old, Easy Grades was bought by Scott Guenther, a Newport Beach carpet and rug manufacturer, who paid $30,000 at auction.

“That’s the only horse we bought all that year,” said Ted H. West, who at 28 is in a spot to become one of the Derby’s youngest winning trainers. “We thought he might bring about $100,000 going into the sale. When we got him, we weren’t sure we had a bargain or whether there was something wrong with him that we hadn’t noticed. When the sale price is so far under your estimated price, you begin to wonder.”

Cheaply bought horses routinely win the Derby. The bargain-basement winners in recent years include Real Quiet, who cost $17,000, and Silver Charm, who was sold twice, both times for less than $100,000. Seattle Slew, the last Triple Crown champion sold at auction, was a $17,500 yearling.

Stevens, who rode Silver Charm and two Derby winners before him, moves from Easy Grades to Johannesburg, one of the two so-called mystery horses from Ireland. Johannesburg, the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner in his only U.S. start, and his stablemate, Castle Gandolfo, have been holed up in Lexington, 70 miles east, since they crossed the Atlantic on Tuesday. They were not allowed to train for two days because of quarantine restrictions. All of the other Derby contenders, including early arrival Essence Of Dubai from the United Arab Emirates, have been training at Churchill.

Aidan O’Brien will have Johannesburg and Castle Gandolfo vanned over this morning, although the vaunted Irish trainer himself is not expected. Pat Keating, an assistant trainer, said Friday that O’Brien had an ear infection.

Besides drawing the inside post, Johannesburg is coming into the race off a defeat--his only loss--in a seven-furlong grass race at the Curragh on April 7.

A Derby hasn’t been won by a horse with only one start as a 3-year-old since Bold Venture in 1936.

Castle Gandolfo, whose only prep this year was a 11/2-length win at a mile on an English all-weather surface similar to Churchill’s, is perceived by some to have a better chance than Johannesburg at the Derby distance of 11/4 miles. Jerry Bailey, who has two notches in his Derby belt, will ride Castle Gandolfo for the first time.

Castle Gandolfo and Essence Of Dubai are the only horses in the field that have run 11/4 miles. Essence Of Dubai won the United Arab Emirates Derby--at $2 million, almost twice as rich as the Kentucky Derby--on March 23, and appears to have recovered from a 12th-place finish, 20 lengths behind Johannesburg, in the Breeders’ Cup.

Sheik Mohammed, the crown prince of Dubai, customarily has many of his young horses begin their careers in California. Essence Of Dubai broke his maiden at Hollywood Park last July and later won the Norfolk at Santa Anita. With Frankie Dettori riding in the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket in England--where the sheik himself will be--the California-based David Flores will take over.

In the last three years, Sheik Mohammed has run four horses in the Derby, among them Worldly Manner, a colt he bought from the late John Mabee in California for an estimated $5 million. Worldly Manner ran seventh in 1999, and none of the sheik’s other starters did much better.

“I think this one is our best chance,” said Saeed bin Suroor, who trains Essence Of Dubai. “He’s the best horse we’ve brought over here.”

Essence Of Dubai, a Kentucky-bred son of Pulpit and Epitome, was sold at a yearling auction at Keeneland, the sheik paying $2.3 million. That’s almost 77 times the price of Easy Grades, and one of the manifold charms of the Derby.