Filly’s Edge Isn’t So Big to the Field

The Mutt-and-Jeff, David-and-Goliath look to today’s $750,000 Santa Anita Derby is the cross-gendered comparison of Sweet Catomine and Wilko. If they were buildings, the filly Sweet Catomine would be a skyscraper and Wilko, one of her 10 challengers, would be a duplex.

“We put the stick to her a couple of weeks ago,” said co-owner Marty Wygod, when asked about Sweet Catomine’s size. “They got her at 16-1 or 16-2 hands, depending on who was holding the stick.”

Horses are measured at their withers, and a hand equals four inches. No one has ever asked to measure the undersized Wilko, one of the smallest horses in the race when he won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie, Texas, in October. About two hours earlier, Sweet Catomine won the Juvenile Fillies, running 1 1/16 miles two-fifths of a second faster than Wilko.

Sweet Catomine, trying to become the fourth filly to win the Santa Anita Derby, is about the same height as Mineshaft, who was voted horse of the year in 2003, but at least a hand taller than Smarty Jones, last year’s Kentucky Derby-Preakness winner.

“The perception is that she’s not as big as she actually is,” Wygod said. “There’s a tremendous amount of scope to her.”

As far as Craig Dollase, Wilko’s trainer, is concerned, Sweet Catomine is big enough, but he’s conceding nothing in a race that could send both horses to the Kentucky Derby on May 7.

“It’s like night and day, when you consider their size,” Dollase said. “My horse would look up to the filly, but I wouldn’t change places with anybody for this race.”

Wilko drew the outside post, No. 11, and Sweet Catomine will break from the 2-hole. Sweet Catomine is a stalker, a horse who runs close to the pace, and Wilko comes from slightly farther back. The real opportunity to size them up might come in a stretch battle, which is one of the possible scenarios in the 68th running of the stake.

“Sweet Catomine is a female with a male’s body,” Dollase said. “Drawing inside, she might have traffic trouble.”

It will be the only time the winners of the Breeders’ Cup’s 2-year-old races have hooked up. Wilko, who had run 10 times in England for trainer Jeremy Noseda before the Breeders’ Cup, was turned over to Dollase after the Lone Star race. Dollase’s longtime client, J. Paul Reddam of Laguna Beach, bought 75% of Wilko from Susan Roy, an Englishwoman, before the Breeders’ Cup.

Wilko, who with 13 starts has at least six more races than any other horse in the field, has been high-maintenance since arriving at the Dollase barn at Hollywood Park. He had a crack on his left front hoof shortly before the Hollywood Futurity in December. A win in the Futurity would have meant an Eclipse Award, but Wilko finished third to Declan’s Moon, who got the title.

Dollase brought Wilko back on March 19 for his 3-year-old debut in the San Felipe Stakes at Santa Anita, and after running fourth Wilko came out of that race with a cracked hoof on his right fore. Dollase said that that hoof was patched last week.

“We haven’t drawn the best post, but I feel the hoof issues are behind us now,” Dollase said. “This is a tough horse. He’s like a bulldog, and he’s got a heart as big as the racetrack.”

Twenty-two times the Santa Anita Derby has been run with more than 10 horses, and six times horses outside the 10th post won.

For this 1 1/8 -mile test, Wilko gets a new-old rider in Frankie Dettori, one of England’s finest. Dettori rode Wilko for the first time in the Breeders’ Cup, then Corey Nakatani took over for the Kentucky-bred colt’s two starts in California. With Nakatani committed to Sweet Catomine, Dettori called Reddam and asked for the mount.

Dettori, 34, spent a few winters at Santa Anita when he was a teenager. He won his first U.S. race at Hollywood Park in December 1989, and a year later won a $100,000 race for trainer Neil Drysdale at Bay Meadows. Dettori, who has ridden in three Breeders’ Cups in California, two at Santa Anita, will ride in three early races today before mounting Wilko. Addressing the unfavorable post position, Dettori pointed out that Wilko won from the outside at Lone Star, but that was an eight-horse field.

“Frankie has been there and done that,” said Dollase, referring to Dettori’s international reputation. “If he rides the horse the way he did in the Juvenile, we’ll give a good account of ourselves.”

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Although a body-sore Tyler Baze hasn’t ridden the last two days, the result of a training-hours accident, he expects to be back to ride Don’t Get Mad in the Santa Anita Derby. ... In Keeneland’s opening-day stake, the $150,000 Transylvania, Jerry Bailey rode the Hollywood Park-based Chattahoochee War. The winner survived a foul claim by Rafael Bejarano, rider of the second-place Guillaume Tell.