BOZICH | Who's the Kentucky Derby Hot Horse? You can get him at 20-1

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- From the days of Aristides, here are the three most dangerous words whispered during Kentucky Derby Week:

The Hot Horse.

Not the contender with the best prep races performances. Not the one with the dazzling blood lines. Not the horse prepared by the Hall of Fame trainer.

Beware The Hot Horse, the one who kicks up the conversation with his morning works at Churchill Downs.

It’s Derby Week. Let’s live dangerously.

It’s time to tout the horse the wise-guys on the Churchill backside are touting: Crown Pride, who has blazed through his workouts like he is determined to become the first Japanese horse to win the Kentucky Derby.

“He’s been getting better and better, close to that perfect condition you want him here for the race,” Koichi Shintani, the colt’s assistant trainer, said through a translator, Kate Hunter. 

On four consecutive mornings I asked trainer Dale Romans which Derby contender has been the impressive runner on the track.

On four consecutive mornings, Romans has delivered the same answer: Crown Pride.

“If you’ve watched him from the day he got here, how could you not like him?” Romans said. “He trains the way that horses trained 30 or 40 years ago, when (legendary Derby trainers) Woody Stephens and Charlie Whittingham brought their horses. He’s got to be the fittest horse in the race.”

This is what has Romans and others touting Crown Pride: On Wednesday morning, the colt worked a half-mile in 46 3/5 seconds.

Several Derby contenders have worked only once in the last three weeks. That was the fifth recorded work for Crown Pride since April 16. The backside crowds gather to discuss the way the colt gets ready to do his serious running.

Shintani instructs his exercise rider to take Crown Pride to the southwest corner of the track, away from the other Derby horses. Before the colt gallops or jogs, he moves in small circles and figure-8, stretching every muscle in his powerful legs.

“Just like a human athlete, if you see anyone going to the Olympics, they’re not just running that race,” Shintani said.

“They’re also going to do all kinds of other things to keep themselves fit. So we look at the horse that way.

“We give them an opportunity to warm up, gallop and go left, gallop and go right to warm up both sides and the muscles there. And then we have a long gallop to keep their breathing up and bring the rider and horse together so they can be as fit as possible.”

Nobody can question Crown Pride’s fitness. His first work at Churchill was three-quarters of a mile. The last four have all been a half-mile.

“I just watched (the Wednesday work) again on tape, and he looks very good,” said Bill Mott, a Hall of Fame trainer who won the Derby three years ago.

“It was fast enough but it wasn’t like he was chasing it. The horse was doing it the right way.”

For Crown Pride, the right way differs from the American Way. The colt won twice as a 2-year-old in Japan by 6 lengths and then by 3 lengths. Both races were a mile-and-an-eighth.

He finished sixth, beaten 3 1/2 lengths, during his first start as 3-year-old in Tokyo on Feb. 20. Then he was shipped to the United Arab Emirates in March.

Crown Pride’s performance there in the UAE Derby put him directly in the Kentucky Derby discussion. Breaking from the No. 7 post position, the colt stalked 3-to-5 horses for about three-quarters of a mile.

Then Crown Pride made the kind of move that win Kentucky Derby winners make. Running three wide, he closed briskly on Summer is Tomorrow before surging past him for a win by nearly 3 lengths.

That race was a 1 3/16th miles, the same distance as the Preakness, the second leg of the Triple Crown, longer the American Derby preps.

Crown Pride also survived a 16-horse field. That’s a Kentucky Derby-sized field but it’s more dirt and traffic than other contenders have overcome.

“When you watch that race, it’s hard not to like him,” Romans said. (Link to a race replay.)

Why would a colt with those credentials be 20-to-1 in the Derby morning line, no better than the eighth betting choice.

Because no horse bred and prepped in Japan has won the Kentucky Derby.

“The Japanese are always striving to do their best,” Shintani said.

“We really want to change history because to have a Japanese horse win this race wouldn’t just change American history, it would change Japanese history.”

And it would prove that Crown Pride is more than simply the Hot Horse of Derby Week.

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