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Javier Castellano, with the trainer Nick Zito, will be aboard Bellamy Road in the Kentucky Derby on Saturday.

May 7, 2005
Odds Favor Bellamy Road, but Can He Deliver at the Derby?
By JOE DRAPE

LOUISVILLE, Ky., May 6 - In the days leading to the Kentucky Derby, George Steinbrenner has declined to discuss his remarkable colt, Bellamy Road. But he does not really need to, because his horse, the Derby's morning-line favorite, is the name on the lips of everyone here, whether they love or hate Steinbrenner's New York Yankees.

Bellamy Road is the talk of the horse racing world for two simple reasons: he demolished a field of allowance horses by 15¾ lengths in his first race this year; and he followed that with a 17½-length romp in the far more prestigious Grade I Wood Memorial, tying the track record at Aqueduct for a mile-and-an-eighth race.

The trainer Nick Zito has inspired admiration for taking five horses to the starting gate for the 131st running of the Derby, but it is the star of his barn, Bellamy Road, that has inspired awe. He is a big, burly bay colt who has won four of his five races over all and could be on the edge of greatness.

The Derby has not been kind to favorites - only two have won in the past 25 years - but Bellamy Road, at 5-2 in the morning line, is being projected as a one-of-a-kind horse perfectly positioned to capture a once-in-a-lifetime race. His head-down, freight-train-style morning gallops have been compared with those of the great Seattle Slew, the 1977 Derby and Triple Crown winner.

Now all he has to do is run that way on Saturday, in weather that is expected to be sunny and mild.

"He may be the one we have been waiting for, the one who can bring home the Triple Crown," said the trainer Bob Baffert, a three-time Derby winner. He has a 50-1 long shot, Sort It Out, in the field of 20 horses. "He's got power, a high cruising speed and appears to be a colt who doesn't get rattled."

No one is conceding the race to Bellamy Road, and each rider is ready and willing to make him and his jockey, Javier Castellano, earn the first-place check of more than $1.6 million. Still, every rival is hard-pressed to find a flaw in Bellamy Road's pedigree or past performances.

His sire, Concerto, was owned by Steinbrenner and earned more than $1.3 million on the track, winning nine stakes races at distances up to the Derby's classic mile and a quarter. Concerto, however, finished ninth in the 1997 Derby.

Bellamy Road has even more distance pedigree on his mother's side; his dam, Hurry Home Hillary, is the daughter of Deputed Testamony, the 1983 Preakness Stakes winner.

Bellamy Road's lone defeat, in the Grade I Breeders Futurity at Keeneland in October, came with an excuse, as well as an aggressive remedy. After finishing seventh, Bellamy Road was discovered to have bruised shins. He was taken from the barn of Michael Dickinson, based in Maryland, and put in the care of Zito, who has won Derbys with Strike the Gold in 1991 and Go for Gin in 1994.

"We wanted a classic trainer with Triple Crown experience," said Edward Sexton, the manager of Steinbrenner's Kinsman Stud farm in Ocala, Fla.

Zito took his time with Bellamy Road, sending him out for his 3-year-old debut on March 12 at Gulfstream Park in Florida. His runaway victory was encouraging, but not even Zito expected Bellamy Road to dominate in the Wood, let alone tie the track record, which was set by the champion Riva Ridge, as a 4-year-old, in 1973.

"I knew he was a nice, strong horse, but I didn't think he would do what he did, the way he did it in New York," said Zito, who watched wide-eyed as Bellamy Road beat his opponents so badly that Castellano was pumping his fist in excitement well before the finish line.

Still, a few horsemen who know a thing or two about winning Kentucky Derbys have raised some doubts about Bellamy Road's chances on Saturday. Bellamy Road has had just two prep races as a 3-year-old; the last horse to win the Derby with that formula was Sunny's Halo in 1983.

But the trainer D. Wayne Lukas and jockey Jerry Bailey - with six Derby victories between them - are more interested in breaking down Bellamy Road's most recent race, the Wood.

Like the surfaces at most racetracks on big days, the Aqueduct oval was extremely fast when the Wood was run. Coupled with the fact that only two horses emerged from that race to make the trip here, Lukas wonders if Bellamy Road's performance that day was really that phenomenal.

"Not a single horse in that field ran a lick, including mine," said Lukas, a four-time Derby winner, whose Going Wild, a 50-1 long shot on Saturday, is the only horse besides Bellamy Road to go from the Wood to the Derby. "When you get speed horses who get things their own way on the front end, a performance is going to look a whole lot more visually impressive when he's rolling along out there all by himself.

"In the Derby, they are going to be at his throatlatch. He's going to get bumped and fanned. Hall of Fame jockeys are going to be on either side of him. He won't get his way. He'll have to make his own luck."

This will be the first Derby mount for Castellano, a 27-year-old from Venezuelan. But he has already proved himself as a money rider, winning the Breeders' Cup Classic aboard Ghostzapper, the 2004 Horse of the Year.

Bailey says he is impressed with the horse and the rider, but he questions whether Bellamy Road can match his monster performance in the Wood, especially using his front-running style amid a half-dozen horses trying to do the same.

High Limit, Going Wild and Spanish Chestnut will all be winging it early with Bellamy Road.

"Bellamy Road's Wood was scary good," said Bailey, who will be aboard the Zito-trained High Fly, who won the Florida Derby and has 8-1 morning-line odds. "You got to wonder if it was too good. There haven't been a lot of horses who can do that and match it the next time out.

"The Derby has been won on the front end before, but to do that a horse has to win three separate races within the race. Bellamy Road is going to have to put away the speed horses, then beat back the stalkers and finally hold off the closers. It's a lot of pressure, especially in a field this deep."

Zito knows about pressure, and if Bellamy Road is by far the best of his five horses, he is not saying. Whether he envisions Bellamy Road as the first Triple Crown winner since 1978, he is not saying, either.

Whether Zito will be praised or cursed once the Derby is run is anybody's guess.

Still, on Friday morning Zito had the look of a man enveloped in grace, a man who knows he might have a great horse among the five he is running.

"We have no excuses," he said.

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