Todd Pletcher has been to the circus the past three years and he's trying to go back with Lion Tamer. If he can grab the brass ring with this colt, it will be quite a trick.

At 35, Pletcher already is a Kentucky Derby veteran, having saddled seven horses in America's Race, including a gang of four in his debut three years ago. He's never won it but he's hit the board twice, and this spring one of his best prospects is the light-bodied, lightly raced Lion Tamer, who will run Saturday (ESPN2, 4-5 p.m. ET) in the $500,000 Lane's End Stakes at Turfway Park in northern Kentucky.

There's no doubt about Lion Tamer's talent. Whether he can go 1 1/8 miles in his two-turn debut is the question. The articulate Pletcher, a straight shooter, doesn't think it will be a problem.

"He's a beautiful-moving horse who covers a lot of ground," he said Tuesday. "He's never given me any indication that he won't go two turns. All of his races have indicated that he wants more at the end of them.

"He's never given me reason to think he won't go a mile and an eighth, but until they try it, you never know."

His pedigree says he should go that far. His sire, Will's Way, took the 1 1/4-mile Travers, and his paternal grandfather, Easy Goer, won the Travers and the 1 1/2-mile Belmont Stakes and just missed in the Preakness and Breeders' Cup Classic. Lion Tamer gets speed from his dam, a daughter of the quick Olympio. Although he was precocious, Lion Tamer doesn't run like the typical young sprinter that blasts out of the gate and can't be caught. He's 3-for-4 from 5 to 7 furlongs despite getting off slowly in all but his second race.

He's been brilliant in two starts this year at Gulfstream, coasting by 7 1/2 lengths in a preliminary allowance Jan. 4 before dominating the Grade II, 7-furlong Hutcheson Stakes by six lengths Feb. 15. Five weeks later, he'll get his first test at a distance, and the layoff is by design. He's not an impressive physical specimen, and Pletcher doesn't want to risk knocking him out so early in the year.

"I think he looks more like a filly than a colt," he said. "He's a lightly made horse, and he's performed well with plenty of time between his races. My biggest concern is what will happen down the road when we have to start crunching his races together, like if he does well in the Kentucky Derby and then has to go in the Preakness. That would be more of a concern than stretching him out."

Lion Tamer's main opponent Saturday is Champali, named for Muhammad Ali and trained by longtime Kentucky fixture Greg Foley. Like Pletcher, he's the son of a trainer, but unlike his big-name rival, Foley, 45, has never run in the Derby, and he hopes the son of Glitterman can get him there. Champali is 6-for-7 lifetime and has the home-field advantage with a 3-for-3 record at Turfway, taking three minor stakes on off tracks there this year.

"You start wondering if you'll ever get a horse like this," Foley said. "He's by far the best horse I've had. We're anxious to see what we have. We'll see how good Lion Tamer is. He's a good horse, and I think we'll make him run."

If Lion Tamer wins and comes back healthy, it will be on to Louisville, with no more races until the first Saturday in May. By going into the Derby off a six-week layoff, Pletcher would be bucking a long-standing tradition and big odds. Not since Needles in 1956 has a Derby winner had such a long break. Pletcher has his reasons.

"The one thing I know for sure is that fast races set horses back," Pletcher said. "Look at what happened to Badge of Silver [after running two big figures] in the Louisiana Derby ... It's hard to put that back in three weeks.''

Pletcher knows his horse history and pointed out that long ago, horsemen often used the mile Derby Trial at Churchill Downs as their final prep a week before the big race. Until the late '80s, the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland was a popular dress rehearsal despite being run only nine days before the Derby.

"I really don't think you have to run two or three or four weeks before the Kentucky Derby," Pletcher said. "There's no secret formula to win the Derby. It's a very difficult race to win, no matter what you do.

"For me, it works well to run my horses every five or six weeks. One of my best [winning] percentages is off layoffs of 30 to 60 days. I do think the Derby is a race you can win by having five or six weeks between starts."

I doubt very much if Lion Tamer will offer bettable odds in the Lane's End, but I'll be rooting for him. I'd be curious to see how Pletcher's Derby experiment would turn out. Anybody with the guts to go against the grain deserves a shot to prove the world wrong.