HORSE RACING : Florida Derby a Big Test for Catire Bello

HALLANDALE, Fla. —  They’ve booked about 1,000 people for the weekend excursion from Caracas to Miami. And the Venezuelan media is here in force to cover the first stage of Catire Bello’s assault on the American Triple Crown in Saturday’s Florida Derby. Whether he turns out to be the second coming of Canonero II, the Venezuelan colt who won the 1971 Derby and Preakness, or the next Mr. Frisky, the Puerto Rican superstar whose Triple Crown excursion two years ago was a complete bust, remains to be seen.

Catire Bello, which means handsome blond in English, is the Arazi of South America, where racing fans tend to embrace their equine champions a bit more passionately than in most of the world. But not since Mat Boy came to Florida from Argentina and won the Widener and Gulfstream Park Handicaps in 1984 has a South American horse caused an upsurge in the Miami tourist trade.

Owner Osvaldo Bello paid 1.75 million bolivars (about $40,000) for Catire Bello as a yearling and was amply rewarded when the colt won four out of five races at age 2, including the Group I Classico Comparison, which is the Venezuelan equivalent to the Champagne Stakes. That earned him the 2-year-old championship, but it wasn’t until his victories this year that the Venezuelan media began to rave and Catire Bello became a traveling tourist attraction.

Catire Bello is 2 for 2 this year and his last victory, an 11-length cakewalk in early February at La Rinconada, the only track at which he has run, convinced his connections to test the waters here.

“We thought the Florida Derby was the right race at the right time,” trainer Ivan Calixto said through an interpreter.

Realistically, the deck is stacked as high against Catire Bello as a deck can be stacked. He hasn’t raced in almost six weeks and, after spending a week in quarantine, will work Thursday for the first time since arriving from Caracas. He has never raced beyond a mile and faces 9 furlongs Saturday at Gulfstream. According to what sketchy data is available from his races in Venezuela, he is strictly a frontrunner.

Calixto said Catire Bello was given several long works before leaving Venezuela in anticipation of the quarantine period. He added the colt has been galloping more strongly than he’d like since Friday, when he arrived at Gulfstream.

The only English-speaking person close to Catire Bello is jockey Doug Valiente, who rode for several years on the Florida circuit before moving to South America.

“He’s a very fast horse,” Valiente said. “He goes in fractions of :22, :45. 1:10. He has a chance. He tries.” But, Valiente said, he is also a colt who resents any attempt to rate him.

His races in Venezuela have been mismatches, Calixto said. “I’m sure he will be facing much better competition in the Florida Derby. But I still feel he will run well.”

If he does run well here, Calixto said one of three things will happen between now and Kentucky Derby day. Catire Bello will be sold to American interests, if there is American interest. If not sold, he will remain in Miami for the April 11 Tropical Park Derby at Calder. Or he will be sent to Aqueduct for the April 4 Gotham.

Among the cast of characters assembled for the Florida Derby, After The Beep, a Dogwood Stable-owned colt, appears to be the most unlikely starter.

He is by Phone Trick, a sprinter and so far a sire of sprinters. He is inexperienced, having run only four times and having lost his last two. He is facing a field slathered with speed. And he is trained by Hall of Famer Allen Jerkens, whose legend was not built by running 3-year-olds in almost impossible spots.

Jerkens never has trained the winner of a Triple Crown race and has not run a horse in a Kentucky Derby prep in Florida since Sensitive Prince. He won the 1978 Hutcheson and Fountain of Youth Stakes but was injured slightly before the Florida Derby and finished unplaced in Kentucky behind Affirmed and Alydar.

But, although his profile, pedigree and running style all seem unsuited to 9 furlongs in top company, the diplomatic Jerkens said he believes After The Beep has enough ability to merit the opportunity. “There are those who say I should just run him in a non-winners of two (allowance) and others are urging me to go in the big one,” he said. “I’m the one who has to make the decision and I decided on the (Florida) Derby.”

Translation: I think this horse would be better off running against non-winners of two at 6 or 7 furlongs, but Cot Campbell has him syndicated to a group of Dogwood Stable investors, who like to see their horses run in big races. And when a horse races in those green and gold silks, Cot Campbell calls the shots.

B. Giles Brophy, who last year lost control of the partnership that owns 1991 Kentucky Derby winner Strike the Gold, has initiated legal action to dissolve the arrangement.

Brophy, who fired Nick Zito as his trainer in January, complains that Zito and his partners, William Condren and Joseph Cornacchia, have ignored his pleas to give a rest to Strike the Gold, who he claims is “mentally and physically tired.” Zito continues to train horses owned by the partnership, BCC Stable, since Brophy is always outvoted on any issue on which they disagree. Zito dismissed Brophy’s observations as coming from someone unqualified to express an opinion on a horse’s condition. Strike the Gold, who has started four times this year, had a two-month break from competition following the Breeders’ Cup and has, if anything, been working more strongly than at any time since the last Triple Crown.

Strike the Gold has lost 11 straight races since the Derby, but has finished second or third six time in that span. He finished second to Sea Cadet last weekend in the Grade I Gulfstream Park Handicap.

Unless the newest litigation involving Strike the Gold interferes, Zito said he is considering running him April 5 in the newly created Thirty Six Red Stakes at Aqueduct.

Irony of ironies: Brophy owned Thirty Six Red.