He Has a Good Read on Derby

Not long after Funny Cide had won last year’s Kentucky Derby, trainer Rick Violette received a phone call from one of his clients.

Violette, taking the high road, does not identify the horse owner.

“This is your cheapskate owner,” he said to Violette. “Will you ever forgive me?”

Had the owner not balked at buying Funny Cide for $75,000 as an unraced 2-year-old, Violette, not Funny Cide’s trainer, Barclay Tagg, might have been standing in the Churchill Downs winner’s circle.

Violette, who respects Tagg as a horseman, is philosophical about the loss of Funny Cide, who also won the Preakness and was voted 2003’s best 3-year-old male horse.

“There was no jealousy on my part,” Violette said. “Who knows? If I had gotten Funny Cide, I might have been running him in [races for New York-breds] instead of the Derby.”

A year later, Violette may have more than a vicarious interest in the Derby. He’s running Read The Footnotes, the 7-5 favorite, in today’s $1-million Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park, and on Sunday, about 250 miles northwest of here, he’ll saddle another colt, Swingforthefences, in the $250,000 Tampa Bay Derby. Both horses are contenders for the Kentucky Derby on May 1.

Like Funny Cide, Read The Footnotes is a New York-bred, although Funny Cide was a gelding and Violette’s Florida Derby starter is a colt.

Violette emphasizes that Seth Klarman, who heads an investment firm near Boston and owns Read The Footnotes and Swingforthefences, is not the man who might have bought Funny Cide. Whoever that other owner is, he told Violette to pass on the horse when the price went from $40,000 to $75,000 in six weeks’ time.

“Funny Cide was a horse that we liked, but not a horse that would give you goose bumps,” Violette said. “[The farm] was saying that he had improved [in workouts], and that was the reason the price went up. I still recommended that we buy, at the $75,000, but I knew it would take a pretty good person to pay [almost] double. You do that and you feel like you’ve been barbecued a bit. A day or two later, [Sackatoga Stable’s 10-man partnership] lost a horse on a claim, and that freed up some of their money to buy Funny Cide.”

After being withdrawn from two earlier sales, Read The Footnotes -- with Violette doing the bidding for Klarman -- was bought last May for $320,000. He began racing in August, and since has won five of six starts.

After his only loss, a sixth-place finish in the Champagne at Belmont Park in October, the son of the champion sprinter Smoke Glacken and the non-winning English mare Baydon Belle, Read The Footnotes has strung together three stakes victories, including a hard-fought decision by a neck in the Fountain of Youth here a month ago.

The Fountain of Youth was a demanding race that knocked the second- and third-place finishers, Second Of June and Silver Wagon, off the Kentucky Derby trail.

“After the race, I was one of the original naysayers,” Violette said. “But [Read The Footnotes] ate up the next day, and he’s eaten everything in sight since then, and he’s been training well. I just hope he doesn’t have to run as hard [today] as he did in the Fountain of Youth. If he’s forced to, I just might go to the Kentucky Derby without another race in between.”

Violette, 51, is from Worcester, Mass. He began riding jump horses at 16 but eventually found himself galloping thoroughbreds at Suffolk Downs near Boston.

“I decided that I could go farther with racehorses than in the show-horse world,” he said.

A Belmont Park trainer who winters in Florida, Violette worked as an assistant to David Whiteley before taking out his trainer’s license in 1983. Among Violette’s stakes winners are Citadeed, who won the 1995 Peter Pan after running seventh for another trainer in the Kentucky Derby, and Nijinsky’s Gold, who beat Lure, a two-time Breeders’ Cup Mile winner, in the 1994 Kelso Handicap.

Read The Footnotes, who has been ridden by three jockeys, gets Jerry Bailey for the fifth time today. Together, they are undefeated. Bailey, who has won the Eclipse Award for riding seven of the last nine years, has won the Florida Derby twice, including last year’s running with Empire Maker. Bailey said that he was surprised by how much acceleration Read The Footnotes showed to gain the lead in the Fountain of Youth.

In today’s 10-horse field, just behind Read The Footnotes on the morning line are Value Plus at 3-1 and Tapit at 5-1. Violette fears the early speed of Value Plus, who has never won a stake, but Frisky Spider, a surprise entry and a 20-1 longshot, can be expected to put pressure on Value Plus up front, at least for a few furlongs. Frisky Spider led the Fountain of Youth for a half-mile before finishing second-last.

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Eleven horses, headed by Action This Day and St Averil, are entered in Sunday’s $250,000 San Felipe Stakes at Santa Anita.

The field, in post-position order: Laditude, Cheiron, Action This Day, Odds On, Last Minute Detail, Preachinatthebar, Rush Into Heaven, St Averil, Harvard Avenue, Toasted and Boss Nass.

Minister Eric, Action This Day’s stablemate, is running at 6 1/2 furlongs on grass today at Santa Anita.

Bob and Beverly Lewis of Newport Beach have entered a program designed to bring new owners into racing. The Lewises will offer a 10% interest in at least 27 of their unraced 2-year-olds. The 15 new investors are expected to spend about $135,000 apiece.