For a variety of reasons, there hasn't been an exciting 2-year-old who turned out to be an exciting and meaningful 3-year-old in a frustratingly long time. Some got hurt, some turned out to be not as good as we thought, many were precocious horses whose flaws were exposed at a later date. It would be foolish to predict future greatness (even future goodness, if there is such a thing) for any among this crop of quality 2-year-olds, but foolish I will be. Sky Mesa's the one; he's going to break the jinx and win the Breeders' Cup Juvenile and the Kentucky Derby.

The odds against it are, of course, enormous, but this is not another Anees, Gilded Time, Favorite Trick or Answer Lively, just to mention a few recent 2-year-old champions and Breeders' Cup Juvenile winners who had absolutely no chance in the Kentucky Derby. They were horses who were supposed to be good, fast 2-year-olds. Sky Mesa is a horse who is supposed to be a good 3-year-old who just so happens to be doing some important things as a 2-year-old. This one is the real deal.

"Once you've done something like win the Kentucky Derby and prove you can do it, you want to go back and do it again," said trainer John Ward Jr., who won the 2001 Kentucky Derby with Monarchos. "Sky Mesa really excites you because he has the qualities to get the job done again for us. We're confident he's a very good athlete."

The Hopeful Stakes was the tip-off. Though Sky Mesa was an impressive winner of his maiden start four weeks earlier, the Hopeful was a race he wasn't supposed to win. Not only was he facing the brilliantly fast and vastly more experienced Zavata, but he had missed some training time due to an illness and would be running at a sprint distance that didn't figure to suit him. Ward had been saying all week that his horse would be a lot be better once the races stretched out and he was able to go around two turns.

A good, closing third probably would have made everyone happy. Instead, Sky Mesa won in convincing fashion. "An afternoon exercise," winning rider Edgar Prado called it.

The Hopeful hasn't produced a Kentucky Derby winner since Affirmed, the 1977 Hopeful winner and the 1978 Triple Crown winner. In the ensuing 25 years, the list of Hopeful winners is overrun with horses with obvious shortcomings when it came to winning the Kentucky Derby. With Sky Mesa, the flaws aren't there.

He has the most important ingredient, the right breeding. By Pulpit out of the stakes winning mare Caress, a daughter of Storm Cat, he has a fabulous pedigree, among the reasons owner John Oxley paid $750,000 for him at the sales. More importantly, it's a pedigree that says he is anything but a precocious speedball. You need only go back three generations in his pedigree to find three horses (Seattle Slew, A.P. Indy and Affirmed) who won the mile-and-a-half Belmont Stakes. There's no doubt he'll be better in routes than sprints like Hopeful or that he will get the mile-and-a-quarter distance in the Derby.

"He's really, really classically bred," Ward said. "With that, he's a big, strong horse. We think he has all the ingredients to be a good, classic horse."

Everything about him is a good fit for next year. Ward is a more than capable trainer who has already won the Kentucky Derby and he has a horse with tactical speed, but one who is not a front-runner sure to get burned out the heat of the battle at Churchill. He seems to be improving and isn't likely to peak too soon. "Prado worked him the other day and was amazed that he was even better than he seemed before the Hopeful," Ward said. The main thing will be staying healthy.

Disappointments are a lot more common in this game then fulfilled expectations. But here's one with all the tools. Is there any reason why he can't win the Breeders' Cup Juvenile and the Kentucky Derby? No. And that's what makes him so awfully exciting.