DAILY RACING FORM
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Canada’s Turf Authority
Wednesday, May 4, 2005
PAGE 5
Hoping for another smooth ride
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Jay
HOVDEY
LOUISVILLE, Ky.—For Craig
Dollase, the toughest part of running
his first horse in the Kentucky Derby
is already over. The plane landed.
When Dollase emerged from his
Delta red-eye early Monday morning
from the West Coast, accompanied
by his wife and two little girls, he
breathed one of those deep, soulful
sighs that said, in essence, “There,
that wasn’t so bad.” To his credit, he
refrained from kneeling.
It had been years since the 34-yearold Dollase had subjected himself to
a commercial flight. Sure, he had
been treated to the occasional trip in
a patron’s private jet. But that’s more
like space travel, with complimentary champagne.
“Turbulence” is Dollase’s one-word
explanation for his particular phobia, and who can argue? Rough rides
up there in those jam-packed DC-10’s
can be a nightmare. What other phenomenon combines the giddy pleasures of severe nausea and a mortal
fear of imminent death . . . except,
perhaps, the first turn of the
Kentucky Derby.
Fortunately for Dollase, his Derby
colt is a rock-solid little soldier who
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New Yorkers genuflect at the altar
of Belmont’s Champagne Stakes, but
guess how many of the last 21
Champagne winners have won the
Kentucky Derby? One: Sea Hero.
Californians have no right to be
cocky either. The Hollywood
Futurity, their premier late-season
2-year-old event, has produced the
same number since 1984. His name
was Real Quiet. And in the Midwest,
there is Keeneland’s significant
Breeders’ Futurity, which has given
us exactly zero Derby winners since
the Breeders’ Cup came around.
Wilko has at least two things most
of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winners have not possessed come Derby
time. First, he is in training. A lot of
BC Juvenile winners don’t even get
this far. And then, he is a thoroughly
seasoned campaigner, with 14 starts
to his name at 11 different racecourses between England and the United
States.
“I guess there’s not much left that
can surprise him out there,” said
Dollase, who took over Wilko’s training after the Breeders’ Cup from his
British trainer, Jeremy Noseda. “All
the places he’s run, I can imagine he’s
been bounced around out there a lot.”
As an added bonus, Wilko might
have his bad luck behind him. The
wet California winter played havoc
with a quarter crack in his left fore.
And then, in his first start as a 3-yearold, he emerged from the San Felipe
Stakes with a crack in his right fore.
“That was really the only time he
ran a little careful, and it made
sense,” Dollase said. “He was
patched right after the San Felipe,
but nothing since then. The last
month has gone amazingly well.”
As he works his way though his
first exposure to personal Derby
pressure, Dollase finds himself surrounded by more family than media.
And that’s just fine. If he loses,
they’ll still speak well of him.
Racing runs deep and wide in the
Dollase clan. Parents Wally and
Cincy have four children, all of them
raised around horses at the farm
they once owned near the California
town of Atascadero. Of them, only
daughter Carrie was daring enough
to find a life outside the racetrack.
Craig became a trainer and married Nancy Carbajal, the daughter of
a trainer. Aimee is a trainer and still
works as her father’s chief assistant.
Michelle, an accomplished horsewoman, ended her marriage to jockey Corey Nakatani last year and
resettled with her children in
Shelbyville, Ky., between Louisville
and Lexington. There she owns and
operates Over View Farm, a lay-up
facility whose client list includes
Bobby Frankel. Wally Dollase has
relocated his public stable in
Kentucky, in part to help Michelle
gain a foothold.
“There’s a real comfort level being
able to ship into my dad’s barn,”
Craig Dollase said. “But after being
here with his Derby horses, it’s pretty exciting to have the first on my
own. Right now I’m not even thinking about the plane ride home.”
Derby noise bettors ought to ignore
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Vice President / Circulation
William J. Allen
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Pete Clark
Midwest Circulation Manager
Harry McAlpin
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gives lie to the cliché that
Thoroughbreds are a flighty, fearful
lot. Wilko, winner of the 2004
Breeders’ Cup Juvenile for Paul
Reddam and Susan Roy, is the kind
of horse who would be giving pony
rides this week if he wasn’t so busy
getting ready for the 131st running of
America’s most famous race.
“That’s got to help him a lot, especially on the day of the race,” Dollase
said Monday. “Horses can lose it on
the walk over there in front of a hundred thousand people. I’ve seen it
happen.”
Dollase has done the walk before,
with three Derby starters trained by
his father and mentor, Wally Dollase.
None of them hit the board, but the
experiences can only help.
“Really, there’s not much to worry
about when it comes to this colt, now
that he made it through the weather
in California this winter,” Dollase
said. “He’s the kind of colt who’s
always going forward, never giving
up. I’d have to think that’s what you
need in a Kentucky Derby.”
Wilko, of course, comes saddled
with the statistical albatross that a
BC Juvenile winner has never won
the Kentucky Derby. There are people who actually say – on television,
no less – that until it happens they
won’t believe it can happen.
Well, fine. But since 1984, when
Chief’s Crown won the first
Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, the major
2-year-old events have lost considerable luster across the board as major
Derby indicators.
Mike
WATCHMAKER
NEW YORK – The reason why
every card-carrying horseplayer in
America is so tempted to take the
rubber band off the bankroll and
unload on the Kentucky Derby is
simple: No other race in the United
States offers the same kind of betting
value. With as many as 20 individual
wagering interests in the race, perfectly plausible horses can finish
one-two-three and result in a four-figure trifecta payoff. If a little imagination is employed, and more exotic
possibilities are included, horseplayers have a chance to make a five-figure score.
If you intend to take a swing at the
Derby, there are many things to pay
attention to before betting. These are
fairly obvious, like condition, form,
quality, pace, and projected ability at
1 1/4 miles. But there will be some
other issues raised this week that
should be taken with a grain of salt –
if you want to be thinking clearly
while formulating your Derby betting strategy.
Perhaps the biggest pre-Derby
event this week will be Wednesday’s
draw for post positions, otherwise
known as the single hour of television most painful to endure. Unless
your horse has horrendous luck and
gets either post 1 or the extreme outside, the Derby post positions, and
the contrived ceremony attached to
their assignments, mean less than little.
In fact, perhaps the only entertainment value in the Derby draw show
is an inadvertent one: watching all
the representatives of the Derby
starters going up to hang their placards and laughably avoiding the auxiliary starting gate like it was the
plague. The thing is, the auxiliary
gate may actually be the place to be.
Even though the main starting gate
holds 14 horses and the auxiliary
gate holds only six, five of the last 10
Kentucky Derby winners (Thunder
Gulch in 1995, Grindstone in 1996,
Charismatic in 1999, Fusaichi
Pegasus in 2000, and Monarchos in
2001) all began their Derby trips from
the auxiliary gate.
If the world ever turned on its
head and I actually had the opportunity to pick a post position for a
Derby horse, I would pick post 15
every time. Post 15 is the first stall in
the auxiliary starting gate, and that
slot gives you room at the break that
all but one of the other Derby horses
does not have, thanks to the gap
between the main gate and the auxiliary one. And, if there should ever be
a scratch and you have to move over
one post, you would still get that
extra room at the start, because post
14 is the outside stall of the main
gate, and you would be the only
other horse beside the one breaking
from post 15 to benefit from the gap
between gates.
Another red herring is the matter
of Derby experience. It will be stated
in various corners that the experience of having saddled or ridden a
horse in the Derby is somehow
meaningful, as if having saddled or
ridden a starter in a previous Derby
will make a horse in Saturday’s
Derby run faster. The fact is, recent
history tells us Derby experience
means nothing. Last year’s Derby
winner, Smarty Jones, was the first
Derby starter for trainer John Servis
and the first Derby mount for jockey
Stewart Elliott. Funny Cide, the 2003
winner, was the first Derby starter
for trainer Barclay Tagg. War
Emblem, the 2002 winner, was only
the second Derby mount for jockey
Victor Espinoza. And when Fusaichi
Pegasus won in 2000, it was the first
year trainer Neil Drysdale had competed in the Derby. Clearly, it is the
horse, not experience, that really
matters.
The one that gets me the most,
however, is when you read the trainer of a Derby horse saying that his
horse handles the Churchill Downs
track well in his training. This is not
to be confused with a horse who is
training well, because it is obviously
important to know if your Derby
starter is healthy and doing well. But
when you hear a horse has been handling the Churchill surface well, it
means nothing, because the track
these Derby colts have trained on
will be nothing like the one they race
over Saturday.
Unless rain is a factor, Churchill
Downs, like many other tracks on
their big race days, speeds up the
track late in Derby week. Its main
track will be faster on Friday for
Oaks Day and faster still on Derby
Day, bearing little resemblance to the
surface over which the Derby
starters have recorded their final
workouts.
How much does Churchill tighten
up the track? Well, the Derby has
been run 130 times, yet five of the
fastest 10 runnings of the Derby have
occurred in the last nine years.
Monarchos won the second-fastest
Derby in 2001 over a track that was
perhaps the fastest ever seen.
Grindstone won the seventh-fastest
Derby in 1996. Fusaichi Pegasus won
the eighth-fastest Derby in 2000. War
Emblem won the ninth-fastest Derby
in 2002. And Funny Cide won the
10th fastest Derby in 2003.
This is no coincidence, because it’s
not like the Thoroughbred breed has
suddenly become so much better. But
it does make you wonder what kind
of time a truly special horse these
days could record.