Is there a serum out there that's being marketed on the sly? Here it is, some 12 weeks before the first Saturday in May, and that Derby fever epidemic, usually a galloping phenomenon by now, is well under control.

Oh sure, a record number of 439 colts and fillies have been nominated to the Triple Crown races, but there is more gripping evidence that the headlong rush to enter a horse in the Kentucky Derby has been nicely tempered.

Wayne Lukas, a four-time Derby winner, has nominated 21 horses, but the fact that he trains a 3-year-old that hasn't been nominated is more noteworthy. It's not the $600 nominating fee, it's just Lukas being more realistic about Yonaguska, recent winner of the Hutcheson Stakes at Gulfstream Park. A son of Cherokee Run, who was a champion sprinter, Yonaguska seems a cinch to have distance limitations, and Lukas will save him for the shorter races.

There appears to be a lot of these reality checks going around. At Santa Anita two weeks before the Hutcheson, Lasersport won a six-furlong dash and his trainer, Darrell Vienna, did no gushing about the 1 1/4-mile Derby. Vienna trained Lasersport's sire, Gilded Time, who won only once--in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile--beyond a mile during a brief career. Vienna did nominate Lasersport to the Triple Crown, but that courtesy became academic when the colt was injured in his next race and sent to the sidelines.

Early Flyer, another son of Gilded Time, won last Saturday's San Vicente, the stake in which Lasersport was injured, and his owner, Verne Winchell, and trainer, Ron McAnally, have been around too long to misconstrue a seven-furlong win in February as a down payment on roses.

"Last year was a bad year for my stable," Winchell said, "so I'm just happy to start out this one with a Grade II win. I doubt very much if Early Flyer will turn out to be a mile-and-a-quarter horse. Unless he turned out to be a real contender, we wouldn't go for the Derby. If he turns out to be a good miler, I'll be very happy."

The wealthy Winchell, whose business strategy was doughnuts to dollars, was 24 when he saw Johnstown win the 1939 Derby. He has been back to Churchill Downs with his horses only twice, never running better than fourth. If he and McAnally were ever to contract incurable Derby fever, it would have been in 1962. They had paid $16,000 for a yearling son of 1954 Derby winner Determine, who became the well-named, grown-up Donut King. His career started at Santa Anita, but by the end of 1961 Donut King was the toast of New York, beating Crimson Satan, the eventual 2-year-old champion, and Jaipur in the Champagne at Aqueduct.

As a 3-year-old, Donut King got a late start, not running until March 20, but a month later he could have won the Wood Memorial. In a roughly run race, Donut King still ran third, beaten by less than a length by Sunrise County, who was disqualified in favor of Admiral's Voyage.

The Derby was only two weeks later, and Winchell and McAnally couldn't wait. Ridan and Sunrise County were the favorites, and Donut King was going to be the third or fourth choice. But less than a week out, Winchell's colt was injured in a workout. He missed the Derby and his career was over.

McAnally finally got a horse into the Derby starting gate in 1980, and he has saddled 10 horses in all, some of them for owners with Derby fever. Like Winchell, his best finish has been a fourth place.

Early Flyer's next race will be the one-mile San Rafael Stakes on March 3.

"His sire won the Breeders' Cup at a mile and a sixteenth, so maybe he can get that far," McAnally said.

He's actually more enthusiastic about another young horse in his barn.

"He's by Pine Bluff [the 1992 Preakness winner], out of Wedding Ring," McAnally said. "We got him late, from Texas, and he's just begun training. It'll be too late for the Derby."

His name?

"I don't think he has one yet," McAnally said. "[The Jockey Club] didn't accept the name they sent in, so they'll have to come up with something else."

At Santa Anita on Friday, a 3-year-old colt named Wild And Wise won the $75,000 Sham Stakes. The unfortunate Sham deserves more than a $75,000 race named after him, but when you're born the same year as Secretariat, this is what history leaves you.

Wild And Wise, bred and owned by John and Betty Mabee and trained by Bob Baffert, has not been nominated for the Triple Crown. There's a late deadline for that, March 31, when the fee jumps from $600 to $6,000. An owner can even wait until May and run at Churchill Downs by paying a $150,000 supplement. Derby fever knows no price.
Copyright 2000 Los Angeles Times