Showing Up The Guys At The Downs

So even then, as far back as last November, the Firestones were thinking about the filly in the Derby. What so encouraged them was that no dominant colt had emerged. Moreover, Firestone , 48, a real-estate developer, had a highly resistant strain of Derby fever, one brought on by those two near-misses. Honest Pleasure finished second to Bold Forbes in 1976, but Jolley sensed that Firestone felt more frustrated last year, when his gifted General Assembly happened to come along in the year of Spectacular Bid. By the end of last season, filly or not, Genuine Risk also was the most promising Derby candidate in Firestone 's barn.

Nor did anything occur last winter to discourage Firestone from harboring Derby dreams. The 3-year-old colts appeared to be an average bunch. And the filly was clearly her old self in her first start of 1980, on March 19, when she won a seven-furlong allowance race at Gulfstream in 1:22[3/5]—good time. With six weeks to the Derby, she was on course. So she was entered in the 1?-mile Wood Memorial at Aqueduct on April 19, her first race against the colts. It was there on the eve of the Wood and in its aftermath, that problems surfaced. Jolley began to have reservations about the Derby plan, leaning now toward the rich filly races of the spring. Firestone , however, wasn't convinced.

Jolley , 42, is an old-school trainer, conservative by nature, who hasn't made it a practice to run fillies against colts and doesn't believe in taking what he considers unnecessary risks. And running fillies against colts was risky, especially in the Derby. As the world knows, the last and only other time a filly won the Derby was in 1915, and Regret was her name. "It's a risk that need not be taken," Jolley said. "So you don't do it."

Firestone , on the other hand, is instinctively more the gambler of the two. "The greater the risk," he says, "the greater the reward." The Firestone horses run under the colors of Catoctin Stud of Waterford, Va. The fillies race in Diana's name and the colts in Bert's.

In Genuine Risk's final prep for the Wood, a handicap race on April 5, the then-undefeated filly won going a flat mile, but she was in heat, the time was slow and Jolley felt she got little out of the race. So he played catch-up, working her harder than usual, to prepare for the Wood. Then he sent her out to meet Plugged Nickle, the Derby co-favorite, and the other boys. When she finished third, beaten a length and a half by Plugged Nickle in a slow 1:50[4/5], Jolley was painfully disappointed. "She was a filly who had been undefeated, and I'm enough of a dreamer to think I can keep that going forever," he said. "If the race was won in 1:48 or even 1:49, I'd say, 'Well, that's the way it is.' But it wasn't, and the race was hard on her. Maybe I trained her too hard. She was puffing and blowing and tired."

Jolley 's first thought on seeing her after the race was, "My God, what have I done to this filly?" To a national television audience Jolley said she wouldn't be going to Kentucky . Firestone , on the other hand, was pleased. He thought she had run well, and he wanted to leave open the Kentucky option. The next day, Sunday, the two men met at Aqueduct, and they agreed to continue pointing for the Derby if the filly recovered nicely from the Wood and if no horse looked overpowering in the Blue Grass at Keeneland the following Thursday.

They decided to attend that race together. If Jolley didn't really want to go to the Derby, the filly gave signals that she didn't want to either. She was fine on Sunday after the Wood but on Monday she seemed a bit dull to Jolley , off her feed and lacking her customary alertness. "My thoughts were concerned with her well-being," Jolley said.

Firestone was concerned, too. "I wouldn't go if I thought it would irreparably harm her," he said. On the same day, having read that Jolley didn't plan to go to Kentucky , Bill Rudy, Churchill Downs ' director of publicity, called Firestone to ask if he still wanted his seat and room reservations. Rudy thought Firestone might want to run the filly in the Kentucky Oaks.

"We're 90% certain we're coming," Bert said.

"To the Oaks?" Rudy asked.