When Cubby Broccoli and his wife, Dana, bought this oversized 2-year-old and decided to call him Brocco, they bounced the name off their trainer, Randy Winick.
"Brocco?" Winick said. "What kind of a name is that?"
"If he wins some races," Cubby Broccoli said, "then you'll know what kind of a name it is."
Brocco was a winner the first time he got to the races, last summer at Del Mar, and he has done little else since. The chestnut colt's fourth victory in six starts came Saturday in the $500,000 Santa Anita Derby, and the three-quarter-length victory over Tabasco Cat will send the Broccolis and Winick to Churchill Downs with the favorite or second choice for the Kentucky Derby on May 7.
"Oh, I don't know who the favorite will be back there," Winick said. "Right now, I'm not worried about that. If Holy Bull ran big in the Blue Grass (next Saturday at Keeneland), I guess he could be the favorite. If my horse is the favorite, or the third or fourth choice, that's immaterial. Whatever price they make my horse, so be it. At any price, I think he'll have something to do with the outcome."
The 57th Santa Anita Derby wasn't what was advertised a week ago, and if the race had been run a day later, the attrition rate might have reduced the field to a match race.
On Wednesday, trainer Ron McAnally, whose Valiant Nature had handed Brocco one of his two defeats, in December's Hollywood Futurity, decided that his colt would be better off facing Holy Bull in the Blue Grass. Then Saturday morning, Soul Of The Matter, who won the San Felipe on March 20 as Brocco and Valiant Nature ran 2-3, was scratched because of a minor injury related to the cracked hoof that had bothered him earlier. The additional scratches of longshots Pollock's Luck, who has a fever and cough, and Wild Invader, who is going to run next Saturday in the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct, added up to a six-horse field.
Tabasco Cat, more experienced than any of the other starters, was beaten for the fourth time in nine starts, finishing one length ahead of Strodes Creek, who had five lengths on his stablemate, Numerous. Robannier finished fifth, and Fly'n J. Bryan, the pacesetter who started to tire at the half-mile pole, was last. Favored Brocco paid $3.40 to win, earning $275,000 for running 1 1/8 miles in 1:48 1/5, which was 1 1/5 seconds slower than the stakes record.
Wayne Lukas, who trains Tabasco Cat, and Charlie Whittingham, the trainer of both Strodes Creek and Numerous, indicated that their horses would also run in the Kentucky Derby, which is an eighth of a mile longer than Saturday's race.
Winick made no apologies for not having Valiant Nature and Soul Of The Matter to beat Saturday. "We did what we had to do," the trainer said. "We had no control over the horses that weren't here."
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