Adriano and me

After suffering through a depressing betting slump on Keeneland's first two weekends, I finally had something to smile about: Lane’s End Stakes winner Adriano is likely to run in the Kentucky Derby after breezing a half-mile in 50 seconds Sunday at Churchill Downs.

If the long-striding son of A.P. Indy is out there when they're playing "My Old Kentucky Home," then I won't have to make a win bet. I threw $5 on him at odds of 38-1 in Derby Future Wager 3, and he's not going to be anywhere near 38-1 on the first Saturday in May. So even if he's never in contention and finishes up the track in Derby 134, I will have gotten great value on my money and will have lost intelligently. I feel like I've already won.

I figured that trainer Graham Motion would decide to take a shot even when he and owner Don Adam were on the fence last month, calling a Derby try "unlikely." When was the last time a horse was held out of the Derby when it was healthy and had enough graded-stakes earnings to qualify?

"I’m pretty sure we’re going to go for [the Derby] after this -- I don’t know why we wouldn’t,” Motion said Sunday. “Believe me, I want to win the Derby as much as anybody else does, but I don’t think it’s engraved in my mind that I’ve got to get there. I want to get there for the right reasons, and I think when we analyze it and we talk with Mr. Adam and with [jockey] Edgar [Prado], I think it is the right thing to do at this point. That was depending upon what happened today, and I think it went well.”

Unlike last year, when Street Sense, Curlin and Hard Spun headed an outstanding 3-year-old crop, the talent is more diluted. Big Brown will be the favorite, but he's run only three times, and it's been 93 years since a horse won the Derby in its fourth lifetime start. Even superstar Curlin couldn't do it, running a distant third behind Street Sense after a rough trip, so if Adriano continues to develop, he'll be a longshot who's in with a fighting chance.

Adriano has won on Polytrack and on turf, but in his only start on a conventional dirt surface he ran ninth in the Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream. But he had serious excuses that day, starting from post 12 and having a troubled trip. A.P. Indy, the 1992 Horse of the Year who won the Belmont Stakes and Breeders' Cup Classic, has sired dozens of major stakes-winners. Adriano has the looks, the stride and the pedigree to get 1 1/4 miles, and many of his rivals don't. I'm rooting for you, my son.