Flatter: Guarantee the Kentucky Derby spring will be sprung

I have bad news for the Karens who think racing’s tomorrow is by definition worse than its yesterday. The Kentucky Derby season is about to get really, really interesting.

For the crowd complaining that the 3-year-old-male division gave us nothing during the winter, I offer an equivalent of David Letterman’s old jokes about squirrels in the spring.

Did you see Fierceness pawing at the ground during his post-gallop bath at Gulfstream Park? He was impersonating a squirrel. He wanted to be sure the soap and water did not wash away his nuts.

“I hope we get a good performance, because I really feel like the Derby, it needs some luster this year,” Paddock Prince handicapper David Levitch said on my podcast. “We need a horse that says really he’s the one to beat, and hopefully he can put a performance forward in the Florida Derby.”

He was talking about Fierceness, but this feels like something we hear every year around this time. Not just lately. This has been going on all my AARP life. The difference now is that the classic winter lasts longer. And by classic I mean the hibernation before the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and *Belmont Stakes. The footnote for that asterisk goes back to my rant about this year’s 1 1/4-mile punchline.

Anyway, it used to be that we would see potential Triple Crown horses run a dozen times before the Derby. Affirmed had 13 races in him before he began his sweep of the 1978 classics. Forty years later Justify had exactly three.

Even Affirmed went nearly four months between races. From his win in the Laurel Futurity at the end of October to his paid workout disguised as a Santa Anita allowance at the beginning of March, Laz Barrera gave the boy a break that I like to call winter. The more things change, right?

We should be so much like the bushy-tailed rodent or the mimicking horse not being in any hurry to raid nature’s pantry while there was frost on the ground. Someone must remind me if we got all twitchy worrying about Affirmed looking the same coming out of his California winter.

This is not to suggest in any way that Fierceness is the second coming of Affirmed. Pshaw. It is more a statement about us humans. Our impatience with a lack of wow moments between the Breeders’ Cup and the spring equinox has become eternal. It has far less to do with the quality of the horses we watch than it does with the ephemeral nature of our collective attention span.

Which brings us to Sierra Leone. By the way, it is lee-own, not lee-own-ee, the pronunciation of the country in west Africa that saw its entire 2006 Commonwealth Games team defect in Australia. It was not that long ago that oxygen was sucked out of the atmosphere by the mass gasping over Sierra Leone, the colt, and his triumphant tribute to Katie Ledecky in the Risen Star regatta.

In just eight days it will not take a lot of ratcheting to get our necks craning toward Keeneland. That is where Sierra Leone, again, the horse, will have a rematch in the Blue Grass with Dornoch, who got his nose down at the wire when they ended up in the same photo at the Remsen.

For the uninitiated who ignore the Las Vegas futures for the Kentucky Derby, Sierra Leone and Dornoch are the 8-1 favorites this week. Fierceness is nearly as short. At one of those Nevada books a dollar gets us $8.50 if he wins the Derby. A month ago we could have gotten 20-1.

None of this even takes into account Timberlake, who enjoyed a sort of employee-of-the-week treatment last month after he won at Oaklawn in the Rebel.

“I thought he ran pretty well in the Rebel off a layoff,” Levitch said. “He did not beat a good field, though.”

That would change this weekend if he were to win the Arkansas Derby. That would be the same Arkansas Derby that brings Muth in from the eternal purgatory where Churchill Downs has tried to hide the Bafferts.

“I would say (Timberlake) is the horse to beat, because he has a race over the track,” Levitch said. “I just want to see him beat a horse like Muth.” 

If that happens, and if Fierceness overcomes his wide draw at Gulfstream Park, and if Sierra Leone and Dornoch put on a display next weekend at Keeneland, then we have ourselves quite the 3-year-old show.

Oh, I almost forgot that mirage of a race that will happen in the Middle East on Saturday. The annual waste of nearly two minutes that is the UAE Derby will be followed by the annual five weeks of “this one is different.” And then it won’t be. And then those nuts of a different sort will be buried for another 11 months in the reality that has made those made-in-Dubai imports 0-for-19 in the Kentucky Derby with no finish better than fifth.

Come to think of it, there is a common denominator here. There was a $20 million distraction last month in Saudi Arabia, which was wonderful for the connections of Señor Buscador. And a hoo will be ballied for the $12 million Dubai World Cup. Quick question. Who won those races last year? I will hang up and listen.

The winter of our discontent is a tradition unlike any other. Wondering whether any stars will shine beneath the twin spires in May is like wondering if Mark Few can win a big game in April.

Oh, unlike the NCAA Tournament, horse racing’s versions of regional finals are not elimination games. Mage, if I recall, was the wise-guy, buzz horse going into last year’s Florida Derby. Then his numbers came back with a big meh when he finished second. How did that conventional wisdom work out five weeks later in Louisville?

I forgot where I was when I had this conversation sometime in the past two weeks. It might have been at the National Horseplayers Championship in Las Vegas or at Fair Grounds in New Orleans or on the phone somewhere in between.

The 3-year-old crop, I said, may or may not be substandard this year. It doesn’t matter. At least 90 percent of the people who will watch the Kentucky Derby are not even paying attention right now. They will not be paying attention in a month or even the day before. If the race is at 7 o’clock, they will tune in around 6:45, and 20 palominos could line up. It still will be the most watched race all year. And by 7:05, most of that 90 percent will be off to an NBA playoff game. 

Oh, make that 19 palominos and the winner from Dubai.

Ron Flatter’s column appears Friday mornings at Horse Racing Nation. Comments below are welcomed, encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday.