The Gun-Metal Gray Rolls-Royce

Spectacular Bid is the horse to beat at the Kentucky Derby

When the FBI began investigating a ring of counterfeiters, agents found no bogus $20 bills but something far more valuable: entry cards to Louisville's Churchill Downs. There could be no surer tipoff that Kentucky Derby time is at hand. The counterfeiters were betrayed by their brazenness. They sold phony $50 tickets to an imaginary grandstand at the 105th Run for the Roses this weekend. But their act of daring is soon to be outdone by a few intrepid horse owners. They plan to put up entries against Spectacular Bid, one of the most heavily favored colts in the history of the Derby. Many track watchers believe the big gun-metal gray colt will take this year's Triple Crown.

Spectacular Bid races under the black-and-blue silks of Harry Meyerhoff's Hawksworth Farm. "Black and blue," says Meyerhoff, a retired Baltimore real estate developer, "is what happens to horse owners." More accurately, black and blue is what happens to Spectacular Bid's opponents. Winner of the Eclipse Award as the nation's best two-year-old colt last year, the horse has rolled up five straight victories this spring, running away from all challengers in the East. All together, Spectacular Bid has been victorious in ten out of twelve starts. In the latest win, last week's seven-length romp in the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland Race Track in Lexington, Ky., the colt was a 1-20 favorite.

Like Seattle Slew, Triple Crown winner in 1977, Spectacular Bid is an auction-bargain colt with a trainer who has never handled a big-time horse and a jockey whose skills have often been criticized. Owner Meyerhoff made an unspectacular bid of just $37,000 at the Keeneland Sales in the fall of 1977 for the sturdy son of Bold Bidder and grandson of Supersire Bold Ruler (his offspring have won six of the last nine Kentucky Derbies). Meyerhoff now spends $78,000 a year just for premiums on Spectacular Bid's $14 million insurance policy.

Grover ("Bud") Delp, the loud and loudly dressed trainer who encouraged Meyerhoff to acquire Spectacular Bid, has been a consistent winner around Maryland tracks, but he has had little experience with a major stakes champion. While other trainers in this year's race are Derby regulars, Delp has never before attended. Says he: "The only thing I'll miss is watching the Derby on TV."

If Spectacular Bid fails to win the Derby--and the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes--many backstretchers would blame the inexperience of Jockey Ron Franklin, 19. Three years ago, Franklin was a high school dropout whose lifetime experience with horses consisted of working alongside posters of Trigger in a Roy Rogers Roast Beef restaurant in his home town near Baltimore. During a visit to the city's Pimlico Race Course in 1976, Franklin heard the track announcer advertising an opening in Delp's stable. The youngster applied and was hired on the spot as a "hot-walker," the lowest stable job of cleaning out stalls and leading horses in endless circles to cool them off from workouts or races. He worked seven days a week, ten hours a day. Delp, divorced and rearing two teen-age sons, treated Franklin as a third.

Only last year did Franklin ride his first race. (He won.) The 5-ft. 106-lb. jockey came home a winner 262 times in 1978 and received his own Eclipse Award as the nation's top apprentice jockey. Yet Franklin's handling of Spectacular Bid has sometimes been amateurish. In two races he has allowed the horse to be boxed in at the rail, then failed to take advantage of an opening. On one of those occasions, the Florida Derby, Franklin rode Spectacular Bid into so many roadblocks that the colt had to come from 14 lengths behind to win. Said one veteran horseman: "It was a Paul Revere ride. He stopped at every town in Massachusetts."

Nonetheless, Spectacular Bid may have the speed and poise to overcome his jockey's uneven performances. "He just glides," reports Franklin. "I'm sitting on a Rolls-Royce." The horse will have only two serious rivals in the Derby: Flying Paster, the three-year-old California champion, and General Assembly, the first Secretariat colt to reach Derby status. Flying Paster lost but one race this spring, to a colt carrying 8 Ibs. less weight. General Assembly ran twice against Spectacular Bid last year and twice was soundly beaten. Eddie Arcaro admires the colt's delicate skill as well as his strength: "He's very agile; he strides beautifully. He's like a dancer." Conn McCreary, two-time Derby winner as a jockey and now a Florida trainer, watched Spectacular Bid train for Churchill Downs this spring. McCreary sums up: "He's the class this year. I just can't see anything getting close to him."

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