Wet, wild day ahead for wide-open Derby

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – It’s anybody’s Kentucky Derby, where there’s no super horse, and superstar trainers Bob Baffert, D. Wayne Lukas and Nick Zito are all absent for the first time since 1980.

The sad saga of last year’s winner, Barbaro, looms large over the field of 20 3-year-olds, many of whom are defying tradition by running off long layoffs or after training on artificial surfaces.

Curlin is the 7-2 morning-line favorite for the $2 million race, having won all three career starts by a combined 28 1/2 lengths.

Street Sense, the 4-1 second choice, faces a double jinx at his hometown track. No Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner has returned to Churchill Downs in the spring to wear the blanket of roses in 23 tries, and no 2-year-old champion has won since Spectacular Bid did 28 years ago.

Trainer Todd Pletcher is counting on one of his five horses to improve his 0-for-14 Derby record.

Threatened thunderstorms could turn the dirt racing strip into a quagmire. Highs in the upper 70s are forecast, along with a 60 percent chance of rain. Visiting royalty Queen Elizabeth II may feel right at home when she attends today.

The last wet Derby was 2004, when Smarty Jones won. Only seven of the 20 colts here have raced in sloppy conditions – with Hard Spun, Scat Daddy and Teuflesberg notching wins. Storm in May finished second, Street Sense third, Dominican fourth and Imawildandcrazyguy fifth on muddy tracks.

Baffert, Lukas and Zito have won a combined nine Derbys, but none of their current crop of 3-year-olds proved good enough to run 1 1/4 miles on the first Saturday in May.

So they’re yielding the spotlight to rising stars Pletcher, Asmussen and Doug O’Neill, along with five first-time Derby trainers and previous winners Carl Nafzger, John Shirreffs and Barclay Tagg. Rookie trainers have won the past four.

Baffert, a three-time winner, was reminded how much horse racing is a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately game when he called his favorite Louisville restaurant this week.

“I said, ‘Tim, it’s Bob Baffert.’ And he goes, ‘Bob who?’ ” Baffert recalled.

Pletcher hopes getting a table at any restaurant won’t be a problem after the weekend. Pletcher will saddle five horses, tying a record set by Lukas, his former boss, and Zito.

“I think Todd will be all over the board. I don’t know if he can win it,” Lukas said. Both Curlin and Street Sense, Lukas added, “might be a little more than he can handle.”

None of Pletcher’s five – Any Given Saturday, Circular Quay, Cowtown Cat, Sam P. and Scat Daddy – is favored. Neither was Barbaro, who arrived undefeated and romped to a 6 1/2-length victory – the largest since 1946.

He was the first horse since 1956 to win after more than four weeks off, an unconventional vacation that Barbaro’s trainer spent Derby week explaining.

Michael Matz joked that this year’s trainers “look like geniuses” because of the extended layoffs given their horses.

“When I did it,” he said, “it was voodoo.”

This year, it’s almost de rigeur.

Post time is 3:04 p.m. PDT.

With 20 starters, the purse will be $2,210,000, with the winner earning $1,450,000.