IT’S DERBY DAY

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — It’s as Bob Baffert says, “If it wasn’t for one race, you guys wouldn’t even be talking to me. There’d be a thousand of you guys over there, at Pulpit’s barn.”

The silver-haired trainer was tending to the preparations for Silver Charm for today’s Kentucky Derby. The Churchill Downs barns of Silver Charm and Pulpit are facing sheds, and those two colts have been staring at one another for several days now.

At 2:32 p.m. PDT today, Pulpit and Silver Charm will be only a stall apart for the start of one of the best things America has after apple pie, a 1 1/4-mile horse race in front of more than 140,000 people. The winners get worldwide bragging rights for the rest of their lives.

Pulpit, who has lost only once, was listed as the favorite earlier this week, but early betting seems to be favoring Captain Bodgit, among others. Losing the Florida Derby at 2-5, as Pulpit did in mid-March at Gulfstream Park, will do that to a horse’s reputation.

Pulpit has won everything else, by comfortable margins and in sparkling times, but a canvass of turf writers in Friday’s USA Today is typical of the lack of respect. Only three of 20 picked the handsome, impeccably bred Claiborne Farm colt to win today.

Ron McAnally, a trainer running the longshot Hello today, sees what he considers chinks in Pulpit’s armor.

“Not running as a 2-year-old, he’s short on experience,” McAnally said. “Not only that, he’s a hot [excitable] horse. I know they’ve done a lot of schooling with him in the paddock, but that’s not the same as getting a horse ready to handle this crowd.”

Schooling, the practice of taking a horse through the routine that he will experience race day, is an imperfect exercise.

“Back in California, we’re schooling horses all the time,” McAnally said. “Sometimes it helps. But you’ll have horses that school perfectly and then they go to pieces when they race.”

Sometimes Derby horses come unglued in the paddock and still win the race. Seattle Slew, en route to a sweep of the Triple Crown in 1977, was a victim of the then-antiquated Churchill Downs paddock. There were people, some of them fortified by mint juleps, reaching through the chicken-wire barriers, trying to touch the colt. He came out to the track all lathered up, like a rustic ready for his Saturday-night bath, and still was one of the more convincing Derby winners.

If anyone can bring a horse to this race properly, it is Frank Brothers. The 49-year-old trainer, who learned the game at the knee of Jack Van Berg, a Hall of Fame horseman, has had only two Derby starters, one of them the favored Hansel who ran 10th here in 1991, but his reputation among the backstretch cognoscenti is of the highest order. Brothers brought Hansel back from the ignominy of the Derby to win the Preakness and the Belmont stakes.

Brothers is enough of a racing historian to know that Pulpit is theoretically carrying more than the 126 pounds that the rest of today’s runners are saddled with. Because of a stress fracture in his left foreleg, Pulpit didn’t race last year. That means he’s trying to accomplish what only one Derby horse, Apollo, has done: win the race after not having raced as a 2-year-old. Apollo won in 1882, when the Derby was only 8 years old.

And if Pulpit does go off as the favorite?

Spectacular Bid, one of the best horses never to sweep the Triple Crown, won at 3-5 in 1979, but a Derby hex began the next year with Rockhill Native, who finished fifth. He was the first of 17 consecutive favorites that have taken their lumps.

“I’m well aware of the statistics,” Brothers said. “This horse has to overcome a lot of things. Hopefully, that 2-year-old thing will be broken.”

When Pulpit finally got to the races, it was Jan. 11 at Gulfstream Park. What he did in a seven-furlong maiden race--winning by 7 1/2 lengths in 1:21 4/5--sent chills through the members of the Hancock family who run historic Claiborne in Paris, Ky. Seth and Clay Hancock, their sister Dell and their mother Waddell, couldn’t resist envisioning another Swale, who won the Derby for them in 1984.

Pulpit’s next start, in allowance company, produced another easy victory, and in the Fountain of Youth Stakes on Feb. 22, he dusted off a field that included the more seasoned Captain Bodgit, who had won the Laurel Futurity and four other races as a 2-year-old.

In their rematch, in the Florida Derby, Captain Bodgit prevailed as Pulpit finished second, 2 1/2 lengths back.

“Then everybody lost a lot of interest in Pulpit,” Baffert said. “It doesn’t take much to fall out of favor in this game.”

But Brothers wasn’t part of the crew that abandoned ship.

“He didn’t have running on his mind in the Florida Derby,” he said Friday. “He ran a bad race. But I still thought he showed a lot of guts, and that was a characteristic that we hadn’t seen before. It takes a top horse to finish second against a good field on a day when he wasn’t at his best. He could have gone out the back door on us right there and then. But instead he came right back and ran well in the Blue Grass.”

The Blue Grass Stakes, run at the Keeneland track about 70 miles east of here, was a rout, with Shane Sellers merely a passenger in the saddle as Pulpit won by 3 1/2 lengths.

The 123rd Derby has no true front-runner. On the lead is not the place to be in this endurance test, unless your horse is a Winning Colors (1988) or a Spend A Buck (1985), the only horses in the last 20 years to have won on the front end.

Frank Brothers does not believe Pulpit will run a Spend A Buck kind of race, and John Tammaro III, trainer of another speedy horse, Concerto, would prefer to be stalking the pace rather than setting it. In terms of running styles, this field is not unlike the horses of 1988, who all sat back while Winning Colors ran off with the roses.

“It’s very exciting to be in this position with a horse who didn’t race at 2,” Dell Hancock said of Pulpit. “This horse is so determined, and I loved his race in the Blue Grass. The stir over the horse in Florida was not something we created, but racing needs a hero and we hope it’s our horse. I know we’re bucking history. But we hope to make history.”

Kentucky Derby Notes

With $427,621 in the win pool, Silver Charm is the early favorite at 7-2 for today’s Kentucky Derby. Crypto Star is also 7-2, but $1,812 more has been bet on Silver Charm. Other Derby odds: Captain Bodgit, 9-2; Pulpit, 8-1; Concerto, 9-1; Hello and the entry of Jack Flash and Sammy Davis, both 11-1; Free House, 12-1; Phantom On Tour, 17-1; Deeds Not Words and Celtic Warrior, both 20-1; and Crimson Classic, 60-1. . . . There’s a forecast of scattered showers for the morning and early afternoon. It’s also supposed to be windy, with temperatures reaching 65 degrees. . . . The winner of the $1-million Derby earns $700,000. The next three places are worth $170,000, $85,000 and $45,000.

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Post Time: 2:32 p.m.

TV: Channel 7