Buddha Out; Trainer Is Stirred, Not Shaken

The atmosphere in trainer James Bond’s 007 Stable at Churchill Downs couldn’t have been grimmer had Dr. No, Odd Job and Auric Goldfinger shown up at the same time.

It was early Friday morning, a couple of hours after Bond, of the same name as author Ian Fleming’s spy extraordinaire, had found Buddha lame in his stall. The Wood Memorial winner, and at 5-1 the co-second choice with Came Home on the morning line, was immediately scratched from today’s running of the 128th Kentucky Derby.

Bond, who has never run a horse in the Derby, will have to wait at least one more year. At 44, he is a racetrack lifer. He started galloping horses when he was 11 and has been training them since he was 16.

He tried to spin Buddha’s bruised left front foot as positively as possible but underneath that blue baseball cap was a crushed horseman.

“It’s very disappointing,” Bond said. “Making it worse is that the owners were here to see the horse go out on the track today. I guess it was fate--it was just not meant to be. It doesn’t appear to be a serious injury. With a lesser horse, you might [run], but I have a gut feeling that this is the right thing to do. This is such a valuable horse, not the kind you’d run by just putting a Band-Aid on him.”

Buddha, owned by Gary and Mary West of Omaha, would have been ridden by Pat Day, who won the 1992 Derby with Lil E. Tee. Day, who hasn’t missed a Derby since 1983, will now replace Corey Nakatani on Blue Burner today.

Bill Mott, Blue Burner’s trainer, said that Nakatani, injured in a spill at Hollywood Park on Thursday, had suffered a slight concussion and was still complaining about dizziness Friday. At Hollywood Park, Nakatani’s agent, Bob Meldahl, said Nakatani wouldn’t ride until next Wednesday.

In only his fourth start, Buddha won the Wood against a solid field that included Medaglia d’Oro and Saarland, who are running in the Derby, and Sunday Break, who would have been a factor today had he earned enough graded-stakes money to start.

“I’ve always said that I wouldn’t come to the Derby until I had a horse that I could be proud of,” Bond said. “I thought this was the horse. I had gotten Derby fever lately too, but unfortunately the water got too hot.”

Bond said that Buddha would not run in the Preakness at Pimlico on May 18. Beyond that, the trainer was uncertain.

“We’re going to lose some training time and that will determine what we do from here,” Bond said. “This horse will still do well by us. We’ve stubbed our toe, but we haven’t jumped off the bridge.”