All the Promise Went Off-Key

For Stevie Wonderboy, it’s 1984. Orwellian-like, the surveillance cameras look down on the handsome 3-year-old chestnut as a handler tends to him in his stall at Merv Griffin’s La Quinta ranch.

“They’re new,” Don Rhodes, who manages the 40-acre farm for the show-biz entrepreneur, says of the cameras. “We put them in just for Stevie.”

Stevie Wonderboy, the best 2-year-old male racehorse in the country last year, was supposed to be the focus of wider-ranging cameras this year. As 2006 started, he was the Kentucky Derby favorite. And despite decades of trying, 80-year-old Griffin has never run a horse in the Derby.

But then on Feb. 6 at Hollywood Park, while preparing for a race at Santa Anita, Stevie Wonderboy came out of a workout with a swollen right front ankle. X-rays showed that he had a hairline fracture. Surgery was required, and although veterinarian Ted Simpson is pleased with the prognosis, Griffin’s horse will miss the Derby on May 6, as well as the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes, the races that complete the Triple Crown.

As Griffin knows by now, it would have been an especially timely year to have a top-level 3-year-old. With the Kentucky Derby only six weeks away, there is a lack of heavy hitters in the division.

Brother Derek, who’ll be favored in the Santa Anita Derby on April 8, has dominated the California contenders, and Lawyer Ron has created a stir in Arkansas, but there’s not a lot of depth.

There also have been the customary number of dropouts -- Corinthian, the first-place finisher before a disqualification in the Fountain of Youth Stakes in Florida, will miss the Triple Crown; and Achilles Of Troy, the disappointing favorite in the Wood Memorial in New York, left the track in an ambulance -- and several of the Kentucky Derby preps have been won by horses with humble beginnings.

Rhodes, who once worked in undercover vice for the Los Angeles Police Department, looking much of the time like Al Pacino in “Serpico,” speculates that Stevie Wonderboy might not run again until next year. Griffin says that decision will be up to his trainer, Doug O’Neill, who led the horse through a 2005 campaign that brought wins in the Del Mar Futurity and the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.

Simpson, who performed the surgery, says the Griffin camp is doing the prudent thing by not targeting a race for Stevie Wonderboy’s return. Should the colt’s recovery go according to plan, it would be tempting to point him for the Breeders’ Cup Classic, a $4-million race at Churchill Downs on Nov. 4. But the reality of the Classic for Stevie Wonderboy is that it would be a grueling 1 1/4 -mile test, against older horses, with the underpinning of only one or two prep races.

“It’s better to just let a horse heal and take your time,” Simpson said. “Then let the horse tell you, through his training, when he’s ready to resume racing.”

After Stevie Wonderboy had won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile last October at Belmont Park, Griffin sang a few bars of “My Old Kentucky Home” for reporters.

But the karma for Eclipse Award winners in the Derby has been all bad. Some even call it a curse. Since Spectacular Bid was division champion in 1978 and Derby winner in 1979, 26 consecutive Eclipse winners have failed to win the Derby, and Stevie Wonderboy becomes No. 27. He also will become the 14th of those 27 who didn’t even run in the Derby.

O’Neill has found succor in Lava Man, a former $50,000 claiming horse who won the $1-million Santa Anita Handicap three weeks ago, but in the immediate aftermath of Stevie Wonderboy’s injury, a gloom had enveloped the trainer’s barn at Hollywood Park.

Garrett Gomez, who has ridden Stevie Wonderboy in all six of his races, said that the colt looked like a genuine 1 1/4 -mile horse, with an easygoing disposition that would have been an asset had he run before a madhouse crowd of 150,000 or so on Derby day.

Griffin, on the other hand, seems to be taking the disappointment with equanimity.

“I’ve had the same philosophy for about 50 years,” he said. “When something bad happens, you just turn the page and don’t dwell on the negatives. I’ve got a horse that won more than a million dollars in just a few months’ time, and there’s a good chance that he’s still got a lot of good races in front of him. What’s that old song that Patty Andrews sang, ‘I Can Dream, Can’t I?’ I’m still singing that song, and dreaming those dreams.”

Here at the ranch, Stevie Wonderboy’s stall used to belong to Skipaslew, a promising, stakes-winning colt who had Kentucky Derby potential in 2004, but who also was waylaid on his way to Louisville. Skipaslew, who gave Griffin his first graded stakes win, is out of rehab and was recently sent back to O’Neill at Hollywood Park.

Rhodes stood outside Stevie Wonderboy’s stall and watched as Cruz Mayorga, another longtime Griffin employee, groomed the colt.

“He’ll be just where he is now, resting in his stall, for about 30 days,” Rhodes said. “He has a different attitude when he gets to the racetrack, but we’re fortunate that when he’s in this situation, he’s a passive horse, not a horse who looks like he’s going to try to tear the joint down.”

Griffin, who has a home on the grounds -- he’s building a five-furlong training track and will be able to watch horses breeze from his bedroom when it’s finished -- gets close to some of his horses. Skipaslew, who was claimed out of a race by O’Neill for $50,000, was a favorite, and Stevie Wonderboy became another.

“Stevie is such a pussycat,” Griffin said. “He actually makes faces at you. If I start talking to someone, he’ll stick his head out and nudge you, as if he’s saying, ‘Hey, I’m the guy you’re supposed to be paying attention to.’ But get him outside that stall, and he turns into a fiery individual.”

The call that Doug O’Neill made to Griffin in early February was one that no trainer likes to make. Griffin said that he and O’Neill had worked out a code for O’Neill’s calls about Stevie Wonderboy. If it was a routine update, O’Neill would say to one of Griffin’s assistants, “Tell Merv it’s good news.”

But the day O’Neill called about the injury, Griffin’s assistant said to the boss, “It’s Doug O’Neill and it’s bad news.”

Griffin said that they sought the opinions of five veterinarians after they had seen the X-rays.

“It’s the same as when you get your house painted -- you get the estimates,” Griffin said. “So we got a lot of opinions about Stevie, and they were all the same. Every vet said the same thing. But if there’s any good news, the injury appears to be easily correctible.”

Simpson, the veterinary surgeon, said that the fracture was about 2 1/2 inches long. The surgery, which took about 90 minutes, was done at the equine hospital at Hollywood Park. Two screws were inserted to fuse the damage.

“They weren’t your typical, stainless-steel screws,” Simpson said. “These were Accutrak titanium screws, which should give the leg more stability.”

Horses’ legs are repaired with screws all the time, and Simpson said that the number of screws doesn’t necessarily equate with the seriousness of the injury. He remembers once using 10 screws on a horse who came back to run again.

Personal Ensign, who never lost a race, winning all 13 of her starts from 1986 to ‘88, ran with five screws in her ankle after having been sidelined for five months.

Roving Boy, champion 2-year-old male in 1982, missed the 1983 Kentucky Derby because of surgery to his left foreleg that required three screws. Bob Hibbert, Roving Boy’s owner, had two of the screws in his coat pocket, for a good-luck charm, the fall day in 1983 when the colt broke down -- in his back legs -- and was euthanized a couple of hours after winning the Alibhai Handicap at Santa Anita.

Sometimes the screws stay in when a horse returns to action, sometimes they don’t. Simpson doesn’t plan to remove Stevie Wonderboy’s screws.

“The reason to be optimistic is that I looked inside the leg [with an arthroscope] after the operation, and the fetlock joint is really clean,” Simpson said. “You don’t want any demineralizing of the long bones, you want them to get dense again.”

After 30 days in his stall, Stevie Wonderboy will get another 30 days of hand-walking with a groom, then 30 days of walking with his tack on. Then he will be sent to O’Neill, for a resumption of his training. Rhodes said that one thing he must guard against is the horse putting on too much weight during his recovery time.

Stevie Wonderboy, named after Stevie Wonder, who first appeared on Griffin’s TV show when he was a teenager, had already run once this year before the injury. Brother Derek beat Griffin’s heavily favored colt by 1 1/2 lengths in the one-mile San Rafael Stakes at Santa Anita on Jan. 14. Stevie Wonderboy was coming back from a 10-week rest.

Brother Derek, who was a far-back fourth to Stevie Wonderboy in the Breeders’ Cup, ran once after that, winning the Hollywood Futurity in mid-December. The injury prevented a rematch earlier this month in the Santa Catalina Stakes, won by Brother Derek as he established himself as the Kentucky Derby favorite.

“Sentimentally, I guess, we’ll be pulling for Brother Derek if he gets to the Derby,” Rhodes said. “Because he’s the horse that beat Stevie.”

Meantime, the Griffin horse operation, which includes 30 head here, rolls on. At the same Florida 2-year-old sale where Dennis O’Neill, Doug O’Neill’s brother, bought Stevie Wonderboy for $100,000, Griffin recently acquired two unraced colts, a son of Golden Missile for $325,000 and a son of Mr. Greeley for $100,000.

“Both are going to Doug right away,” Griffin said. “Dennis says they look tremendous. We’re excited about both of them.”

He can dream, can’t he?