THE KENTUCKY DERBY : Mr. Prospector Can Feel Like Mr. Proud : Two Offspring Run for Roses; Cryptoclearance Likely Second Pick

LOUISVILLE, Ky. —  The subject was roses, and the sire Mr. Prospector.

“He used to be known as a speed sire,” trainer LeRoy Jolley was saying. “But the record shows that he’s become a distance sire.”

Jolley was talking about Mr. Prospector because Gulch, his leading candidate in Saturday’s 113th Kentucky Derby, is a son of the stallion who stands at Claiborne Farm, about 85 miles east of Churchill Downs.

But there is another Derby starter who has Mr. Prospector blood running through him. That would be Cryptoclearance, whose sire, Fappiano, was also a son of Mr. Prospector.

So, Mr. Prospector has two generations of progeny running in this most inscrutable of Derbys. And Friday, in the Kentucky Oaks, there’s a 3-year-old daughter of Mr. Prospector, named Chic Shirine, who is given a good chance to win.

“There’s a lot of stamina in this horse’s bloodlines,” said Flint (Scotty) Schulhofer, the 60-year-old former steeplechase rider who trains Cryptoclearance. “He has the pedigree to go the distance. All he’s needed to do is develop and fill out.

“He’s lean and lanky, which by my way of thinking is the way a distance horse should be made. If you’re short and stocky, you better be a sprinter.”

Cryptoclearance, a $190,000 yearling purchase who races for Phil Teinowitz, a Chicago attorney and realtor, figures to be one of 17 horses running in the Derby and is the only starter who has won two stakes races at 1 1/8 miles. Typically, none of the contenders has yet to run the Derby distance of 1 miles, which is always one of the intriguing aspects of the first race in the Triple Crown series.

Cryptoclearance won his first 1 1/8-mile race in the Everglades at Hialeah in February. After failing to catch Talinum by half a length in the 1 1/8-mile Flamingo three weeks later, Cryptoclearance won the Florida Derby at the same distance at Gulfstream Park April 4, when he, No More Flowers and Talinum were like sardines in a can at the finish line.

Only Demons Begone, winner of the Arkansas Derby and undefeated as a 3-year-old, will get more support at the windows of this sprawling race track Saturday.

One thing, however, has perhaps devaluated Cryptoclearance’s win in the Florida Derby. No More Flowers, second by a head that day, came back to run an awful second against mostly second-rate horses in the Derby Trial at Churchill Downs last Saturday. Based on that, some students of comparative races are saying that the Florida Derby was not as strong a race as it was first perceived.

“I don’t buy that,” said Jolley, whose stable was based in Florida during the winter. “Horses will run differently on different surfaces. It may very well be that No More Flowers didn’t do better here because he couldn’t handle the track.”

Because Jose Santos rode Gulch to his victory in the Wood Memorial, there was some question for a few days whether he would ride that horse or Cryptoclearance in the Derby. Cryptoclearance’s emergence as a solid Derby contender has dovetailed with the time Santos started riding him, in the Everglades.

“Actually, the guy the owner wanted early in the year was Pat Day,” Schulhofer said. “But he was already committed to Demons Begone.”

Santos, who turned 26 last Sunday, rode horses that earned $11.3 million last year, which made him No. 1 in the country. While the Chilean-born Santos and his agent, Frank Sanabria, pondered which horse they would take in the Derby, Schulhofer assured everybody that Santos would ride Cryptoclearance.

“I think Jolley and (Peter) Brant (the owner of Gulch and part owner of Leo Castelli, another Derby starter) were trying to out-money me,” Schulhofer said. “If Santos hadn’t ridden my horse in the Derby, I would have given him a lot of problems. I would have done something to make sure that he lived up to his commitment.”

On Wednesday, with exercise rider Janice Traister on his back, Cryptoclearance worked half a mile in 48 seconds, which is just about the way he breezed at Gulfstream a couple of days before the Florida Derby.

Schulhofer was pleased. He has trained some good horses--sprint champions Ta Wee and Smile and grass champion Mac Diarmida--but this is his first Derby. Teinowitz, who named Cryptoclearance after a CIA security designation that he read about in a spy novel, has been in two previous Derbys, but not with a horse the caliber of Cryptoclearance.

In 1971, Teinowitz ran an entry at Churchill Downs, with Royal Leverage finishing 12th and On the Money coming in 15th. In 1977, his Flag Officer was 10th.

“It’s exciting to come here, especially with a contender,” Teinowitz said.

Mickey Taylor, one of the owners of 1977 Triple Crown champion Seattle Slew, once told his friend, Albert Finney: “The only way to go to a Derby is with a 1-2 shot,” which is what the odds were on Slew. Cryptoclearance won’t be that short Saturday, but only Demons Begone will be shorter.