Should trainers John Kimmel and Rick Violette Jr. follow conventional wisdom or go with their gut feelings? Follow history or their instincts?

Both chose the latter, settings themselves up for criticism or perhaps proving once and for all that there are no hard and fast rules as to how to win the Kentucky Derby.

Watch it in Motion

You can see a replay of the 130th running of the Kentucky Derby on ESPN Motion. • Download Motion now

Neither the Kimmel-trained Friends Lake nor the Violette-trained Read the Footnotes have run since the March 13 Florida Derby. Virtually every horse that comes out of that race runs in another prep, usually either the Wood Memorial, the Blue Grass or the Arkansas Derby. The thinking is that the Derby is always won by a horse that follows the same pattern. They have at least three preps and one of them is in April. To do otherwise is supposed to mean that the horse will be underprepared for a test as difficult as the Kentucky Derby. By now, Kimmel and Violette have heard the same stat over and over and over again: the last horse to win the Kentucky Derby without a race in April was Needles, way back in 1956.

But Kimmel announced immediately after Friends Lake won the Florida Derby that you wouldn't see his horse again until the Kentucky Derby. A few days later, Violette said that Read the Footnotes, a disappointing fourth in the race as the even money favorite, would also sit out the remainder of the preps.

"People are making way too much of this," Kimmel said. "Maybe for some horses it would be a problem. But not fo this horse. It isn't an issue. No matter what I seem to do, I can't seem to get him tired."

"My horse trains very aggressively," Violette said. "For me, it was a no-brainer. The layoff won't be a factor."

To make matters worse, that meant both would have only two starts as 3-year-olds coming into the race, something no Derby winner has done since Sunny's Halo in 1983. Between the two trends, that's a lot of history to buck.

But maybe Kimmel and Violette are on to something. The game and the way horses are trained has changed so dramatically over the years that a lot of rules are becoming obsolete. It used to be that a lot of horses would prepare for the Kentucky Derby in the Derby Trial, run the same week as the race. Many came into the race with 12 or more races in their careers. It used to be that horses would have their last major Derby workouts just a few days before the race. Now everyone works six or seven days out. Is it just a matter of time until all these rules go flying out the window?

"Everybody thinks they're smarter than everyone else," said Dick Mandella, who will start Minister Eric and Action This Day in the Derby. "The fact is we are all guessing."

Both Kimmel and Violette had their reasons for giving their horses the month of April off. Friends Lake has run his best races off a layoff. He won the Sleepy Hollow last year at Belmont over New York breds after a layoff of nearly two months and then won the Florida Derby after again sitting out almost two months. Had Kimmel been preparing this horse for any race other than the Kentucky Derby no one would have questioned his decision.

"This is one of the shortest turnarounds he has ever had," Kimmel said. "He won the Florida Derby after an eight-week layoff after what I could call a very mediocre performance. What will he do after a good race like he had in the Florida Derby? That should take him forward. I think he'll be sitting on a good performance."

Violette's decision wasn't quite so simple. Read the Footnotes started off the year with a huge race in the Fountain of Youth, winning after a long and grueling stretch battle with Second of June. The race clearly knocked him out for the Florida Derby, where he was a flat horse who showed none of the punch he had four weeks earlier. There was no doubt about what happened: he bounced and bounced hard.

Initially, Violette was prepared to follow a more conventional route to the Kentucky Derby, but reasoned that made no sense. His horse had already proven his ability in the Fountain of Youth and needed time to get back on track. Had he run in the Wood Memorial, which was his original plan, he might have gotten a good race out of him, but that probably would have left him with a horse with an empty tank for the Kentucky Derby.

"History or not, this was the right move for the horse," he said.

Violette felt even more confident he made the right move after a reporter informed him that since Needles' win in 1956 only 18 horses had run in the Derby without a start in April. Of those 18, most were longshots that had no reasonable chance. It turns out that the stat might be rather meaningless.

Can a horse win the Kentucky Derby without a start in April? Saturday, two trainers will try. They might be foolhardy. They might be smart enough and bold enough to believe in their gut feelings and turn out to be right. Stay tuned.