HORSE RACING : A Duel for Best in the West

WASHINGTON — Europeans train horses in a way so different from that of their American counterparts that it seems hard to believe they are all dealing with the same species.

The contrast in styles will be very evident in the few days. Saturday afternoon Bertrando faces A.P. Indy in the Santa Anita Derby to determine which colt will be Arazi’s main challenger in the Kentucky Derby. And then on Tuesday, Arazi will make his 3-year-old debut in France, where he almost certainly will cement his status as the favorite at Churchill Downs.

Horsemen in England and France reject the American notion that hard training and tough racing are necessary to get a horse ready for a specific objective. They rarely employ fast workouts; they disdain the use of stopwatches. And their prep races may be glorified workouts rather than meaningful competition.

That is the case with the Prix Omnium at St. Cloud, which will be Arazi’s only tuneup for the Kentucky Derby. None of his rivals has decent stakes credentials. In fact, two of the others in the field may be stablemates who are simply in the race to serve as pacesetters and sacrificial lambs. So even after Arazi draws off to an expected easy victory, it will be hard for Americans -- or anybody else, for that matter -- to judge whether he has improved or declined since he won the Breeders’ Cup so impressively last fall.

The $500,000 Santa Anita Derby, by contrast, will be an illuminating and probably exciting race. Fans who watch it on ABC’s “Wide World of Sports,” or via simulcast at Laurel and Pimlico, should be able to assess the quality of the two California-based colts who are having their long-awaited showdown.

Bertrando possesses brilliant early speed and has scored wire-to-wire victories in all of his races -- except for the Breeders’ Cup, when Arazi flew past him. Unlike a lot of front-runners who win against fields that are otherwise devoid of speed, Bertrando has shown the ability to outrun other California speedballs and keep on going. Moreover, he’s a battler. Even when Arazi blew past him last fall, he didn’t give up and he held off the rest of the U.S. horses in the field with ease.

A.P. Indy is a more versatile colt, one who can sit near the early lead or else make a strong stretch run-as he did when he won the Hollywood Futurity with a powerful five-wide move. But although both horses have been visually impressive, it is still uncertain how good they are. Neither has ever run a fast final time. In my system of speed figures, even some of the lesser Kentucky Derby contenders have earned numbers in the 105-to-110 range; neither of the California colts has ever topped 100, suggesting that they may not be as formidable as everybody thinks. We’ll know Saturday.

Although A.P. Indy is the favorite and may, in the long run, prove to be the better horse, Bertrando appears to have the tactical edge Saturday. He must cope with only one other speed horse, Hickman Creek, and he successfully dusted off that rival in their last meeting. He has drawn Post Position 1 as well, so he should be able to cruise to a relatively easy early lead. And Santa Anita is a track where front-runners are always tough to beat.

The odds are thus stacked against A.P. Indy -- and that’s what makes the Santa Anita Derby such a meaningful test. If he can beat an outstanding speed horse under conditions that favor a speed horse, then he may have enough quality to be considered a legitimate challenger for Arazi. But I’m betting that he is not good enough, and that Bertrando will prevail Saturday.

The day’s other major event, which will be simulcast to the Maryland tracks, is the Gotham Stakes at Aqueduct, and it too will tell a lot about the credibility of a Derby contender. Lure, a colt trained by Shug McGaughey, got a huge amount of media hype when he won his debut last summer in track-record time at Belmont Park, but he flopped in his next two starts and was packed away for the year. He launched his 3-year-old campaign with an eight-length romp in an allowance race, and now the hype is starting again.

He will be such an overwhelming favorite that it might be worth taking a shot against him, perhaps with long shot Devil His Due, but the 3-year-olds in New York are so weak that Lure may be able to maintain his mystique until he crosses paths with Arazi.