The Jones' Boy's Girls

So the great silver bird did its thing and yours truly made it to the Blue Grass Thursday evening. On Friday it was over to Keeneland to worship (What a place! There should be a choir in the paddock at that track singing high-line arias. It is so classy; so cool; so full of so many people who seem so happy. If, when you die, you get to go to racetrack heaven, it may be at Keeneland, or surely a track in the sky that is its mirror-image.) Left a donation in the plate, of course, but felt good doing it. Such is the spell.

On Saturday morning it was up-and-at-‘em-early for the Derby (and Oaks) Notes Team gig. My man Gary Yunt, the indefatigable one, can’t get there early enough and usually beats most of the trainers to the barn. He picks me up at ye-olde-hotel and we’re into Gate 5 and cruising the backside at 0-dark-30, when you know the horses are up for sure but you can’t say the same about any of the two-legged types.

On the agenda for me for the weekend – among other connections to track – is the Larry Jones barn and his pair of Mutt and Jeff (never mind if you don’t understand that reference) fillies – Eight Belles and Proud Spell. They are terrific, each in her own way, and so are Jones and his wife Cindy.

The word has been that the fillies – either or both – might enter both the Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks and could run in either race, in either case. This is causing a stir in many quarters, especially among the connections of folks with colts sitting on the Derby “bubble.”

Cindy Jones, you should know, now sports a baby parrot named Buddy that they got as a Christmas gift. “He doesn’t sing yet, but he will,” she says. “He’s too young; they sing after they get to be a year old.” (Now if you win a barroom bet on that one, please write back and let us know.) Cindy also whispers that she thinks that Larry may wind up running Eight Belles in the Derby because he thinks she couldn’t beat Proud Spell in the Oaks. (And isn’t that a nice problem to have.)

Larry Jones tells a wonderful story about chatting with trainer LeRoy Jolley recently when he came by the barn to look at his two fillies. Jolley, you may recall, is one of the few to saddle a filly to win the Kentucky Derby. That was, of course, Genuine Risk, and the year was 1980. Jones says Jolley took a look at his Eight Belles and said (in reference to her possible start in the Derby) -- “Run her.”

Jolley also told Jones that he’d recalled the especially fast work that Hard Spun turned in just prior to last year’s Derby and how people said that his horse had probably left his race on the track. That Hard Spun work was the fastest coming up to a Derby since General Assembly (trained by – LeRoy Jolly) buzzed an even quicker one prior to his start in the 1979 Derby, a race he finished second in (as Hard Spun had last year) to a pretty fair hide named Spectacular Bid.

“LeRoy told me his fast work wasn’t the reason that General Assembly didn’t beat Spectacular Bid,” Jones said. “And he said he didn’t think my fast work last year got Hard Spun beat. He just said he believed in both cases it was a matter of the horse saying they were really ready to run a big race. That’s all.”

Further, Jones pointed out, Jolley noted that the year after he had that fast work and second-place finish, he won the Derby with a filly. “Now wouldn’t it be something,” Jones said smiling....and he just left it at that.
Almost assuredly, Jones is going to run Eight Belles in the Derby. He thinks it’s one of those years where there aren’t any monster colts that have shown they can’t be beat. He says he doesn’t see anything as good as Street Sense, or Curlin, or Hard Spun in this year’s Derby. He thinks his filly just might be good enough to win it.

The man might have something there; he just might be right. And if he is, lay you 9 to 5 that next year he and Cindy come back to Churchill with Buddy the parrot on her shoulder singing “My Old Kentucky Home.”