War Pass a bad fit for Derby

So you bet on War Pass at 6-1 and 9-2 in the first two Kentucky Derby Future Wager pools? If you misplaced the ticket, don't bother looking for it, because it's not going to be worth anything.

The 2007 2-year-old champion's odds in Future Pool 3 shot up to almost 15-1 after he was run down in the final 70 yards of the Wood Memorial last Saturday at Aqueduct. The mass of horseplayers diving off the bandwagon had a far better assessment of his second-place effort behind Tale of Ekati than his connections did.

After the race, in which War Pass was drifting in the stretch and ran the final furlong in a crawling 14 seconds, trainer Nick Zito said, "We didn't win, but it's just like a win. This is the first time I have finished second and can say it's just like a win, because of everything he had to endure and overcome. He vindicated himself."

Well, not really. Zito is correct that War Pass had a very demanding trip in the Wood, where he was hounded for a half-mile in a very quick 46.07 seconds by no-hoper Inner Light, the rabbit for stablemate Court Vision, who plodded in third. War Pass showed guts in opening a daylight lead on the turn, but Tale of Ekati didn't dazzle anyone with his rally. He ground away while chasing a very weary horse, and despite the very hot early fractions, the final time of 1:52.35 made it the slowest Wood since 1952. Running fast early and slow late is no way to prep for 1 1/4 miles at Churchill Downs.

Still, owner Robert LaPenta was upbeat, saying, "He got a lot out of this race. This was a great conditioning race."

Maybe, and it was a dramatic improvement over his previous try, a stunning last-place finish at 1-20 odds in the Tampa Bay Derby. That effort was too bad to be true, and the colt probably flipped his palate. But to think that War Pass is a viable candidate to win the Derby is illogical. His need-to-lead style and questionable distance pedigree, combined with the likelihood of facing other front-running types, weigh heavily against him. He has quality and the potential to be a champion miler, but he has the classic look of a pace casualty on the first Saturday in May.

It sounds as if Zito knows that, too. You don't win the Derby twice -- Strike the Gold (1990) and Go for Gin (1994) -- without being aware of what it takes.

"We'll take him to Kentucky," Zito said. "We'll take it one day at a time. If War Pass has a good month, we'll see if we can make it to the Derby."