By Harry King
LITTLE ROCK — Once the exception, two races and lots of training for a 3-year-old is now the trendy path to the Kentucky Derby.
Trainers who long wanted to pursue that route can thank Carl Nafzger and his triumph with Street Sense in the 2007 Kentucky Derby for the opportunity to do so without ridicule. Since then, Big Brown and Mine That Bird have also won the Derby with only two prep races in the four months leading up to the first Saturday in May.
It is the “fresh horse” angle personified and, in today’s $300,000 Rebel at Oaklawn Park, there are two prime examples — Lookin At Lucky and Noble’s Promise, both making their first start of the year only seven weeks prior to the May 1 Derby.
Both earned plenty of graded money at 2 to reserve a spot in the starting gate for the Derby, so their trainers have the luxury of doing the two-step to Louisville.
Street Sense was the first two-prep Derby winner since 1983, the year that Sunny’s Halo doubled up in Arkansas and in Kentucky. At 3, Sunny’s Halo’s preparation was more happenstance than planning because of physical issues.
Unable to decide whether the new approach reflects concern about the frailty of today’s thoroughbreds or a change in attitude about training, an expert was asked.
“Most trainers believe today’s horses are more fragile, which makes them less likely to ‘waste’ a race to get a horse into shape,” said Randy Moss, the ESPN/ABC analyst from Arkansas. “They want to make every race count, but at the same time the best trainers have perfected the art of keeping racehorses at peak performance levels by spacing races four to six weeks apart …”
As a result, there is a new dynamic for the Triple Crown prep races.
Moss believes trainers were itching for the opportunity to reduce the number of Derby preps, but were afraid to do so for fear of bucking history and looking foolish.
Picking up on the trainers’ preferences, many racetracks have moved their big races to provide more down time before the Derby. It wasn’t that long ago that the Blue Grass was nine days before the Derby and the Wood Memorial was two weeks out. Now, both are 21 days prior.
For almost 50 years, every Derby winner had a race within four weeks of the Derby. Then Barbaro won the Florida Derby five weeks prior to the Kentucky Derby in 2006 and Big Brown did the same thing. Last year, Mine That Bird raced five weeks prior to the Derby at Sunland Park.
This year, the Florida Derby is next week — six weeks prior to the big deal in Louisville.
Handicapping the Rebel, it is worth remembering the hefty bank accounts of Lookin At Lucky and Noble’s Promise, trainer Bob Baffert’s experiment with blinkers on Lookin At Lucky, and Nafzger’s comments when asked if Street Sense had to win both of his prep races.
As long as he does what we want, Nafzger said, he doesn’t have to win either race to go to the Derby.
“Winning is not that important,” he said. “These are prep races. This is not the Kentucky Derby.”
——-
Harry King is sports columnist for Stephens Media’s Arkansas News Bureau. His e-mail address is hking@arkansasnews.com.
