It’s Looking More Like West Toast

When telecaster Chris Lincoln co-hosted the Kentucky Derby trainers’ dinner here Tuesday night, his first name should have been Frank.

“The Santa Anita Derby horses [stink],” Lincoln told the audience. A little later, in case the crowd hadn’t heard him the first time, he repeated his remark.

Lincoln’s blunt assessment of the four Santa Anita Derby horses running at Churchill Downs on Saturday in the 131st Kentucky Derby is not an isolated opinion.

“When I handicap a race, the first thing I do is throw out the horses I know can’t win,” said Richie Eng, the Las Vegas newspaperman who has written the book “Betting on Horse Racing for Dummies.”

“For this Derby, four of those horses are the ones who ran at Santa Anita.”

Trainer Bobby Frankel is trying to win the Kentucky Derby with High Limit.

“Can a Santa Anita Derby horse win this race?” Frankel was asked.

“I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, but the answer is no,” Frankel said. “The tipoff to the Santa Anita Derby is the horse who ran second [General John B]. That race was like everything else in California racing, subpar.”

Frankel, who stables horses at tracks in New York, Kentucky, Florida and Canada, also has a division at Hollywood Park, but recently he shipped 10 horses out of there because he said he couldn’t find races to run them in.

General John B, second to Buzzards Bay in the Santa Anita Derby, is out of the Kentucky Derby because of a knee injury. Missing by half a length in California at 64-1, General John B is typical of California shippers that have sought intersectional wins this year. Before the Santa Anita Derby, run on April 9, General John B had beaten one horse, losing by 26 lengths in the Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, Fla.

Going Wild, a stakes winner at Santa Anita, was beaten by 57 1/4 lengths in two races, in New York and Kentucky.

Besides Buzzards Bay, the other Santa Anita Derby horses running Saturday are Wilko (third at Santa Anita), Giacomo (fourth) and Don’t Get Mad (sixth). Mike Battaglia’s Kentucky Derby morning line brings more disparagement: Buzzards Bay and Wilko are the shortest-priced horses of the four, both at 20-1. Don’t Get Mad’s opening odds are 30-1, Giacomo’s 50-1.

Buzzards Bay, running 1 1/8 miles at Santa Anita in 1:49, got a 98 Beyer rating, which is a numerical estimate of a horse’s performance. The Beyer people, who work for Andrew Beyer, the semi-retired racing writer for the Washington Post, say that prep-race ratings under 105 make it difficult for horses to win the Kentucky Derby. Last year’s Derby winner, Smarty Jones, had a 107 Beyer in his final prep, and the year before, Funny Cide recorded a 110.

There are more negatives for the Santa Anita Four. Buzzards Bay will break from the outside post in a 20-horse field, and a horse hasn’t won from that far out since Clyde Van Dusen in 1929. Wilko, the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner, is winless since then and a Breeders’ Cup winner has never won the Derby.

Don’t Get Mad is the only Santa Anita Derby horse to have run since that race, four weeks ago, and although he was sharp in winning the Derby Trial at Churchill last Saturday, a Trial winner hasn’t won the Derby in 47 years.

Giacomo has lost five straight since he broke his maiden with a 10-length win at Santa Anita in October. He doesn’t seem to have improved since his second-place finish against Declan’s Moon in the Hollywood Futurity in December.

Declan’s Moon, had he not been injured and sidelined until next fall, had the potential to restore the prestige of California horses. He was last year’s champion 2-year-old male and was undefeated before he went on the shelf in March.

Ron Ellis, Declan’s Moon’s conditioner, also trains Don’t Get Mad, who’s three for three at Churchill Downs.

“He’s bounced back extremely well from the Trial, and seems like a happy horse,” Ellis said of Don’t Get Mad. “He obviously likes the track, and horses for courses is something I’ve always believed in.”

Ellis discounts recent history, in which horses from California went east and came up short.

“Time and time again, California horses have gone out of town and been very competitive,” Ellis said. “This might not be the best group we’ve ever sent here, but it would be a mistake to underestimate the Santa Anita horses.”

Fourteen horses ran in the Santa Anita Derby and went on to win the Kentucky Derby. In the 1980s, Gato Del Sol, Ferdinand, Winning Colors and Sunday Silence fit that profile. In the 1990s, Silver Charm, Real Quiet and Charismatic didn’t win the Santa Anita Derby, but they still used the race as a springboard to victory here.

But since Charismatic in 1999, the luster of the Santa Anita Derby has disappeared. The last five Santa Anita Derby winners have been 14th twice, sixth twice and fifth in the Kentucky Derby. The fifth-place finisher, Point Given in 2001, redeemed himself by winning the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes.

Craig Dollase, who trains Wilko, is optimistic that his horse can overcome the Breeders’ Cup jinx as well as the Santa Anita Derby slump.

“The Boston Red Sox won the World Series,” Dollase said. “If that can happen, any jinx is ripe to be broken.”

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A day before New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner tries to win the Kentucky Derby with Bellamy Road, Joe Torre, the Yankee manager, will run Sis City, the 4-5 morning-line favorite, in today’s $500,000 Kentucky Oaks.

Torre is part of a four-man partnership that claimed Sis City for $50,000 in August. Since then, the group has sold 75% of the filly to Bob and Janice McNair.

Dance Away Capote, who has a fever, and Aspen Tree, who finished fifth in Thursday’s $100,000 La Troienne Stakes, have been scratched from the Oaks, reducing the race to seven starters.

An omen? Trainer Tim Ritchey and jockey Jeremy Rose, who will try to win the Derby with Afleet Alex, won Thursday’s eighth race with Always Noble, a 4-year-old gelding who paid $44.60. Rose has won five times with the horse since Ritchey claimed him for $40,000 in November.

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Facts and Figures

* What: The 131st Kentucky Derby.

* When: Saturday at 3 p.m. PDT.

* Where: Churchill Downs, Louisville, Ky.

* TV: Channel 4.

* Field: 20 3-year-olds.

* Distance: 1 1/4 miles.

* Favorite: Bellamy Road, 5-2.

* Total purse: $2,399,600.

* Winner’s share: $1,639,600.

* Weather forecast: Partly cloudy, upper 70s.

* 2004 winner: Smarty Jones.

From Associated Press