Miller Remains Nonchalant as Others Dream of Derby

HALLANDALE, Fla. —  Some of the nation’s best horse trainers have spent this winter preoccupied by a single objective: developing a young racehorse into a contender for the Kentucky Derby.

Woody Stephens, Shug McGaughey and Scotty Schulhofer have been at Gulfstream Park every morning, scrutinizing every move by their top 3-year-olds. They have spent countless hours plotting training and racing schedules. Then, on Saturday afternoon, they all learned (or at least should have learned) the same sobering lesson. As hard as they might be trying, they aren’t going to win the 1990 Derby, because their horses aren’t good enough.

And, ironically, the one horse at Gulfstream who might be Kentucky Derby material -- Red Ransom -- probably won’t win it either, because his trainer isn’t really trying.

The Fountain of Youth Stakes had drawn most of the big-name 3-year-olds in the East, and it figured to be a genuine test of their abilities. All of the horses had been prepped for a top effort. But McGaughey’s champion colt Rhythm and Stephens’s stretch-runner Yonder delivered abysmal performances. Schulhofer’s colt Slavic was a mediocre sixth behind the 25-1 winner, Shot Gun Scott.

The only 3-year-old who has raced notably well in stakes competition this year is Mister Frisky, the speedball from Puerto Rico who scored his 15th straight victory in the San Rafael Stakes at Santa Anita Saturday. But his stamina is suspect; the Kentucky Derby is up for grabs.

Red Ransom might have been the horse to seize this opportunity. He had shown such talent winning his only two starts as a 2-year-old that trainer Mack Miller announced that he was going to bring the colt to Florida and prepare him for the Triple Crown series.

For anybody else this would not have been a surprising decision. But the 68-year-old Miller traditionally spends the winter in Aiken, S.C., training his stable in a leisurely fashion; he says that for him, the racing season begins in August, at Saratoga, and ends in November.

He managed his last good 3-year-old, Java Gold in 1987, consistent with this philosophy; he skipped the entire Triple Crown series, won some prestigious stakes in New York during the summer and early fall, and announced his intention to skip the Breeders’ Cup because it was too late in the season, though an injury made this latter decision academic.

Miller trains for an owner, Paul Mellon, who can afford to pass the richest races in the country, but they got enough criticism for their conservatism with Java Gold that Miller was willing to try something new with Red Ransom.

Red Ransom came to Gulfstream, but without Miller; an assistant was in charge. Miller stayed in Aiken, as usual, and didn’t even make an appearance at Gulfstream to look in on his putative superstar until a week ago.

If there is a lesson to be learned from the history of the Kentucky Derby, it is that a horse needs decisive, sure-handed management to win. Horses such as Winning Colors and Sunny’s Halo succeeded only because their trainers devoted almost fanatical concentration on this one objective. Red Ransom didn’t even get to his first start of the year in a fashion that would inspire confidence or respect.

The colt skipped a Feb. 17 allowance race in which he would have been a cinch because Miller felt he needed one more solid workout. After he had that good workout, Miller entered him in an allowance race Feb. 24 that even the most inept trainer would recognize was wholly unsuitable-a race against tough, older stakes-class sprinters.

On the morning of the race, Miller telephoned the stewards to scratch his horse, saying that the workout had taken too much out of him. Two days later, he announced that he was firing jockey Randy Romero for the too-fast workout and replacing him with Pat Day.

The trainer and owner have the prerogative to use any jockey they want, and they may have good reason for preferring Day to Romero. But firing Romero because of the workout was a craven explanation and a bum rap.

“I was there,” said Romero’s agent Lenny Goodman. “I heard the orders: ‘I want a good sharp work.’ ”

With his new jockey, Day, Red Ransom finally made his long-awaited debut against a seemingly weak allowance field Saturday. But he ran into an unexpectedly tough horse, Bright Again, who delivered an exceptional performance and held off the favorite by more than a length. Red Ransom’s effort wasn’t a bad one, but it wasn’t what one would expect of a 2-5 shot who had been hailed as a superstar.

Miller’s explanation? He hadn’t worked Red Ransom hard enough.

“He worked well here but I didn’t do much with him between the work and the race,” the trainer said. “Maybe I was too easy on him. The going was a little deep and he got tired. I think he’s capable of running much better. If not, we won’t go to Louisville.”

The next day, Miller was back in Aiken.

Mack Miller obviously is not a man with a burning desire to win the Kentucky Derby, and few racing people would be surprised if Red Ransom wound up missing the Kentucky Derby and making his mark later in the season-at Saratoga in August, for example. But in a year when the Derby is wide open, it is a shame to see a colt like this wasted on an owner and trainer who are above caring about the race that everybody else so passionately wants to win.

Before the Fountain of Youth, McGaughey and owner Dinny Phipps were standing just outside the press box, waiting to watch Rhythm run, and you could see the tension etched on their faces. Phipps may be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and McGaughey may have an Eclipse Award on his mantel, but they still cared passionately about their colt’s performance Saturday and his prospects for the Triple Crown series.

After Rhythm ran so disappointingly, McGaughey surely was agonizing about the reasons and trying to figure a way to make the horse run better the next time. So were Stephens and Schulhofer. These men may sometimes wish they could leave town and let an assistant worry about a potential champion, but they know that’s not the way to win a race as demanding as the Derby.