Columnist Dean Juipe: Don’t blame Smarty for dull Derby

Dean Juipe

Friday, May 14, 2004 | 10:01 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

Everyone has an opinion ready to be expressed during the running of a race such as the Kentucky Derby, and I volunteered mine as the race was in progress and I stood among a small crowd in the lounge at the Desert Willow Golf Club.

"This is the worst Derby in history," I recall saying at the time, and I still feel that way today if you allow for the fact that none of us has seen them all and that I've only cared to watch the past 40 or so.

The worst Derby in history?

"Well, there certainly wasn't anything exciting about it," adds Howard Schwartz of the Gambler's Book Shop on 11th Street downtown. "It was a mediocre field to begin with. Then they get all that rain, and the horses don't like having mud splashed in their faces and everyone gets more conservative.

"The way it was presented on TV didn't help, because they didn't add any mystique to it.

"It happens once in a while, but it turned out to be an important race that wasn't very fabulous."

Amen. Nothing against the winner, the still-undefeated Smarty Jones, but his Derby victory did little but reinforce the belief that this season's crop of 3-year-olds isn't especially formidable.

I'm hoping to be much more impressed -- and perfectly willing to throw myself on the Smarty Jones bandwagon -- when the Preakness is run Saturday. Like everyone else, I'm dying for a Triple Crown winner.

Smarty Jones' handlers are pleased with his No. 7 position in the starting gate, but they're infatuated with seven on a number of counts. Smarty Jones started from the seventh spot in earlier victories in the Southwest Stakes and the Rebel, and the Derby was his seventh win in a row.

They liked the luck of the draw.

They also have to like the historical precedents that are in place for the race. The 10-horse field for the Preakness includes six horses that did not run in the Derby, and only six horses in the past 52 years have won the Preakness without running in the Derby. In addition, since Affirmed in 1978, nine horses have won each of the first two legs of the Triple Crown -- which indicates it happens somewhat frequently and that it certainly might happen once again.

Of course, since Affirmed no horse has taken all three of the great races.

Funny Cide won the first two legs last year before losing at the Belmont.

Is Smarty Jones the horse we've been waiting for? He just may be, given that he has never lost.

And he certainly couldn't be faulted for a less than stellar Derby. He ran his race perfectly, staying within hailing distance of Lion Heart until darting ahead with the finish line in sight.

But the trouble with the rain-plagued Derby was the 16 other horses, none of whom presented anything resembling a serious challenge. They started slowly as a group and they fell considerably behind Lion Heart and Smarty Jones, making it a two-horse race that obviously favored the sleek, stamina-blessed trailer.

It was no surprise when Smarty Jones pulled away to win by 3 lengths. But it was a surprise that it came so easily and without so much as a threat from the vast majority of those in the field, including the Las Vegas-owned Tapit.

It was a race with a lot at stake but not much of a race. It was dull and missing the usual quotient of drama.

This one has to be better.