We’re down to NINE days before twenty hopefuls blast from the gate in the wide-open 139th Kentucky Derby. Next week, we’ll pick OUR choices and, hopefully, one of our Thursday blog crew members, Bill Mauk, a horse broker in Lexington, will pick his. Whoever is closer to the ultimate truth wins a five-pound wedge of Mother Fletcher’s Fotchamarra Mozzaroni cheese and a helicopter trip to the Chechen Republic. It’s ON, baby!
Bill Mauk, in case you’re wondering, is a very old friend of ours. Matter of fact, we have nothing but very old friends. Wouldn’t know what to do with a young one. Anyway, Bill is a man of many talents, having been a blacksmith, horse trainer, sale consigner, broker, real estate magnate and who knows what else. These days, he is slowing down, however, and has been forced to confine his activities to selling horses and chasing women, both of which he is adept at. Bill even lived in Florida once, just a skip and a jump from Calder. He had a young wife in those days. Some of us are not so good with wives, though, so he eventually moved on and moved back to Kentucky.
After I broke up with second wife, Harolyn, I had to come up with some separating money so I went up to Lexington to buy some yearlings with the intention of training them in Florida and reselling them as two-year-olds. Bill Mauk helped me inspect the yearlings and we ended up with six of the critters, laying out something less than $70,000. Harolyn did a good job training them and we sold the first two, at select sales in Ocala and Hialeah, for $80,000. The other four did not qualify for select sales so we entered them in a sale at the old Kennington Training Center on Paris Pike, outside Lexington. We kept two and sold the other two for ninety thousand. We benefited from quickly-maturing horses and fast-improving pedigrees, a half-brother of one of our purchases winning the California Derby just before the sale. Bill had made certain during the original purchases that all the selections, first and foremost, were well-conformed and would probably hold up to training. Mauk is one of those guys who has looked at so many horses he can spot a problem almost before the candidate is walked out of the stall. I can look at a horse for five minutes and not see what Bill does with a cursory glance. Anyway, we topped the Kennington sale and a good time was had by all. I recall drinking too much, dancing with some guy’s wife too much, driving around New Circle road too much, trying to find my way back to Bill’s apartment in Midway, and passing out on a bed with a plastic cover, fully dressed. And waking up in the morning in great disarray. If I tried any of that today, I’d probably wind up shot, wrecked on the highway or dead of alcohol poisoning.
Thinking I was a horse-buying genius, I doubled my pleasure the following year and bought twelve. Bill was tied up with a high-roller and couldn’t spend as much time with me as the year before so I was on my own much of the time. Suffice to say, I did not fare so well as the previous year. We did just okay at the sales but the biggest revelation was how much I saved with Harolyn training the horses at cost. Try training FIFTEEN horses (the twelve purchased and three homebreds) sometime and see how much is left for trivial pursuits like food and your mortgage. It’s scary. Anyway, all this penury was enough to put me off the sales trail for awhile. I stuck to racing. Yeah….like THAT was a big financial windfall. I’m not sure how much racing owes me but it’s somewhere between ten kazillion dollars and the cost of one of those private rocket trips to the moon. What causes people to stumble in this direction? That’s easy. The Devil makes them do it.
Derby Watch
The shaky pick of the pundits is still the undefeated Verrazano at a wobbly 5-1. I don’t know. I’m not convinced he wants the mile-and-a-quarter. You have to assume the Derby will have a fast pace and Verrazano won’t be too far back. When it comes time to pass the leaders, he will be right there. But can he outfinish the true closers? I’m doubtful. Still, he’s won every time out and it’s hard to toss out an undefeated horse trained by Todd Pletcher and ridden by John Velazquez.
My current choice is Orb (photo below), trained by old-timer Shug McGaughey and owned by Stuart Janney, who also owned the fabulous Ruffian, maybe the greatest filly ever. Some folks have all the luck. Some folks are also pretty smart, like Janney. The pace of the Florida Derby was not helpful for a closer like Orb, but he won anyway. With a mob of twenty breaking from the gate(s) in the Derby, post position could be significant and a good break could be critical. As good as he has been, this horse seems to be improving each time out.
Goldencents, spectacular winner of the Santa Anita Derby, is currently 8-1. Trained by classics-experienced Doug O’Neill and ridden by Hot New Thing jockey Kevin Krigger, this horse made everybody sit up and take notice in California, even considering the quality of competition, which was suspect. Also, big difference in racing surfaces at Santa Anita and Churchill Downs. Must consider.
Revolutionary, another Pletcher horse, this one owned by the redoubtable WinStar Farm, is 8-1. Nobody liked him much before he won the Withers in NYC and many people still dismiss his impressive Louisiana Derby win, a mere neck victory over somebody named Mylute. Credit him for winning both races but Orb is not Mylute.
Normandy Invasion may have been the most impressive horse in Verrazano’s Wood Memorial, closing like a banshee. If the Kentucky Derby was suddenly moved to Aqueduct, we’d like him a lot more. Currently 10-1.
Itsmyluckyday, trained by Laurie and Eddie Plesa from Calder is 12-1 and we’ll be rooting for him to get on the board in Lexington. He couldn’t beat Orb at Gulfstream but, then again, neither could anybody else, and it was his first time out in two months. We’d like to think he could win it but it’s a stretch.
Java’s War, trained by Kenny McPeek and ridden by Julien Leparoux, is a scary contender.He finishes like Charles Bronson in Death Wish. If he could ever actually start halfway decent, everybody would be in trouble. The Derby is not a race in which you can afford to start poorly.
We don’t think that Arkansas Derby winner Overanalyze is good enough. Vyjack had his chance against Verrazano in the Wood and failed, albeit in a decent performance. Governor Charlie is too inexperienced. Palace Malice might get a piece and could be worth a look at 20-1 or better. J. Wayne Lukas’ horses, Will Take Charge and Oxbow are extremely unreliable and will probably be part of the field. Frac Daddy, Kenny McPeek’s other horse, has much to prove. (We sent Kenny a horse several years ago. Kenny told us he was beating everything in the morning. Oh oh. He didn’t beat many horses in the afternoon, unfortunately. A couple of races in, Kenny decided to retire and become a horse broker like his idol, Bill Mauk. He handed off our horse to Assistant Trainer Helen. Assistant Trainer Helen told us the horse was beating everything in the morning. We asked her if the track would move the races up to the a.m. They wouldn’t. We thought that maybe the horse didn’t like Kentucky. We shipped him down to Larry Pilotti in Miami. Larry told us the horse was beating everything in the morning. “Oh, really?” we remarked. Larry put the horse in a maiden race at Gulfstream and he won by seven widening lengths. It must have been the slowest passle of horses in any race that year because he never did another thing. We suspect he’s over in St. Augustine or somewhere, pulling one of those tourist carts. The tourist cart man is probably telling everybody “He’s beating everything in the morning!” After Kenny McPeek was satisfied he would never see our horse again, he unretired and got back into training. He’s doing real good, too. Never calls us anymore.)
Lines Of Battle would like to be the first horse from the United Arab Emirates to win the Kentucky Derby. I would like to be the first man from Fairfield to make the Radio City Rockettes. For both of us—ain’t gonna happen. If it does for the former, the shock will be as great as it would for the latter. Falling Sky—the name says it all.
The Lila Rules
Our Rottweiler puppy weighs 32 pounds now, which is 12 more than when we got her. She is settling in well and is getting a grasp of how things are done around here. Lila has graduated from sleeping in our bed to sleeping on a very large, soft bed of her own, where she has much more room. She gets to come up on the people bed in the morning, freely dispensing licks in all directions. Lila now has 176 toys, all of the chewable variety. This does not prevent her, alas, from attacking anything foolish enough to repose on the floor nor anything which hangs too low (and no, that doesn’t include me. Yet.). Yesterday, she got stuck in some wiring behind the washer and drier. We were concerned that it might take the Jaws of Life to get her out but somehow she wriggled free. Lila perks up every night around dinner, especially when chicken is in the offing. She valiantly attempts to climb up on the chairs, thus being closer to the table, hence the chicken. Siobhan feeds her dogfood and eggs but this seems to Lila a smidge discriminatory.
We’d like to tell you different, but Lila is occasionally subject to “accidents.” Fortunately, these have so far been of the liquid variety as opposed to the more onerous solid alternative. One of Lila’s more spectacular feats, however, is emitting monstrous clouds of intestinal gas over a two-mile area. We called the Guinness Book Of Records regarding this matter but they laughed at us and called it impossible. We invited them down. This problem has created several complaining phone calls from our neighbors and even people in the next community. Sadly, when one is trying to select a puppy, there is no true test for crepitation. There may be a silver lining to all this, however. The U.S. Army is always looking for devastating new munitions to be used in the War For Freedom and Lila Gas might be a viable possibility.
Fastest Horse In The World?
Cosmic Flash may run at Calder Sunday. The races scheduled for Friday, then Saturday, were short a horse or two. They’re not as fussy about dull old Sunday, though, and the Racing Office just told me things looked good. With Dot about to foal, we’ll probably have to shoot down and back the same day, not much fun. Unless you win, of course, whence the miles melt away. If you’re not the patient sort and you actually give a damn, results are available free from Equibase. Keep your fingers crossed. And anything else you got.
That’s all, folks….
