Don’t get the wrong idea about Larry Jones. He did not catch an incurable case of Kentucky Derby Fever when he finished second last year with Hard Spun. He has plenty of common sense under his trademark cowboy hat. He’s so respectful of convention and history that he gets a sort of crooked grin when he talks about trying to win both the Derby and the Kentucky Oaks the same weekend.

That feat has been done before, of course, most recently by another guy named Jones, Ben A., the legendary horseman who trained for Calumet Farm in the 1940s and ‘50s. In 1952, he won the Oaks with Real Delight and the Derby with Hill Gail, both ridden by Eddie Arcaro.

But now Larry Jones is poised to try something that Ben never pulled off. Neither did Max Hirsch, Horatio Luro, Charlie Whittingham, D. Wayne Lukas, or any other training icon you might want to mention. He’s going to try to win the Oaks and the Derby the same weekend with two different fillies.

“I know some people will say I’m crazy,” he said yesterday (Sunday) at Churchill Downs. “But I really think it’s the right thing to do by both the horses. I’ve talked to both the owners and they agree. If it doesn’t work out, do you think I can get away with blaming them?”

One of the owners is yet another Jones, former Kentucky Governor Brereton, who bred the filly Proud Spell at his Airdrie Stud farm. Never worse than third in seven career starts, Proud Spell is so strong and consistent that Jones toyed with the idea of running her in the Derby. In the end, however, the traditionalist in him won out over the non-conformist. She’ll run in the Oaks, where she could be the favorite.

The other owner, Rick Porter of Fox Hill Farms, has decided to enter his filly, Eight Belles, in both the Oaks and the Derby. But he sees the Oaks as Plan B in case she draws the far outside post in the Derby. Barring that, he’s committed to making her the 39th filly to try the boys in the Derby.

“The Oaks is a great race,” Porter said, “but the Derby is the biggest race in the world. I disagree with those who say that winning the Derby won’t make her more valuable as a broodmare. Who knows what a Derby-winning broodmare is worth? How can you put a price tag on that?”

Shortly after 8:30 a.m., Jones led Proud Spell to the track for a six-furlong workout. Regular rider Gabriel Saez gave her a running start at the five-furlong pole, then cut her loose for splits of :11.40, :22.60, :34.40 and :46.40, galloping out in 1:12.80.

Jones immediately escorted the bay filly back to Barn 43, where Saez dismounted one filly and climbed aboard the other. The tall, gray Eight Belles, a daughter of Unbridled’s Song, got a head start on the five-eighths pole and ripped off fractions of :11.40, :22.60, :34.20 and :45.80, the second-fastest five-furlong time of the morning. She galloped out six furlongs in 1:12 and one more after that in 1:25.40.

Only the highly-regarded Kentucky Derby colt Colonel John went quicker than Eight Belles among the 62 runners who worked five furlongs Sunday. The colt’s time was a rapid :57.80.

“Proud Spell’s work was exactly what I wanted,” noted Jones.“I told Gabriel I wanted a good work in her, something like she did prior to the Breeders’ Cup (in which she finished second). She’s had a couple of slow works over on the ‘Poly’ at Keeneland and she needed this. It was good for her. Eight Belles probably went a little quicker than she needed, but it’s fine. She was all run out there today and she’s quite capable of turning in those kind of works.”

Of the three fillies to win the Derby, the first was Regret in 1915. Owned by Harry Payne Whitney, she beat the boys so convincingly that Col. Matt Winn, the former haberdasher who promoted the Derby into its exalted position of popularity, was able to get a lot of publicity mileage out of the gender factor.
Fast-forward from 1915 to 1980, when the often-stormy relationship between trainer LeRoy Jolley and owner Bertram Firestone was tested severely by the filly Genuine Risk.

Immediately after she had run third in the Wood Memorial, Jolley stated unequivocally that she would run in the Oaks. Only one thing wrong. He hadn’t consulted with Firestone, who overruled him because he wasn’t impressed with that year’s crop of colts. On Derby Day, Firestone was vindicated and Jolley was left to save face.
(Only four years earlier, Jolley and Firestone came to Louisville with an excellent chance to pull off the Oaks-Derby double. Their Optimistic Gal won the Oaks, but their ballyhooed Honest Pleasure, who went off at odds of 2-to-5, was upset by Bold Forbes in the Derby.)

In 1988, Winning Colors became the third – and most recent – female to win the roses. A big, strapping roan, she easily met trainer Lukas’ criteria for running fillies against colts: She had to be exceptionally talented, measure up when you objectively evaluated the opposition, big and strong enough to within the pressure, and possessed of enough tactical speed to get a good early position.

After blowing away the boys in the Santa Anita Derby, Winning Colors dominated her Derby, going right to the lead for jockey Gary Stevens and then holding off a late charge by jockey Pat Day and Forty Niner to win by a neck. It was a classic example of Lukas having the courage of his convictions.

In 1999, trainer Bob Baffert took a crack at pulling off the Oaks-Derby double with fillies, running Silverbulletday in the Oaks and Excellent Meeting in the Derby. Had Baffert switched the fillies, he might have done it.

The superbly talented Silverbulletday won the Oaks so powerfully that some felt she could have beaten that year’s crop of colts in the Derby. That opinion only was strengthened when Excellent Meeting ran fifth in the Derby, beaten only a couple of lengths by Charismatic.

It was easy for second-guessers to figure that Excellent Meeting could have won the Oaks and Silverbulletday the Derby. After Silverbulletday turned in another stunning performance to win the Black-Eyed Susan in Baltimore, Baffert tried her against the colts in the Belmont Stakes, but she got pressure on the lead by Charismatic, the Derby and Preakness winner, and that proved to be the undoing of both. Silverbulletday faded to seventh in the 12-horse field and Charismatic suffered a career-ending injury deep in the stretch.

Although both Proud Spell and Eight Belles meet Lukas’ criteria for running against colts, Eight Belles seems to be bigger and stronger. As she went to and from the track yesterday for what turned out to be an impressive workout, onlookers noted how she dwarfed Jones’ stable pony, Pal, who weighs 1,200 pounds.

Both the owners agree with their trainer’s assessment of this year’s Derby field: Other than the unbeaten Big Brown, all the colts have holes in their resumes. Pyro, for example, finished 10th in his last race, the Blue Grass Stakes. Colonel John, the Santa Anita Derby winner, has never run on real dirt (as opposed to Polytrack). And so forth. The knock on Big Brown is that he’s only had three career starts.

“The colts have been pretty inconsistent and each one of them has question marks,” Larry Jones said, “so this might be one of those years where the right filly has an excellent chance to beat the boys.”

Jones, a native of Hopkinsville, won his first race at Ellis Park, the little track near Henderson, Ky. When a tornado hit the track three years ago, Jones sold his nearby home and moved his stable to Delaware Park and Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark.

“If there hadn’t been a tornado, I wouldn’t have had Hard Spun,” Jones likes to say. “I’d still be working at Ellis Park.”

He received universal praise last year for the way he kept the colt moving forward through a long and difficult campaign. Hard Spun won the Lane’s End at Turfway Park, finished second in the Derby, third in the Preakness, and fourth in the Belmont. He then came back to finish second in the Haskell, which set him up for a victory in the King’s Bishop Stakes at Belmont Park.

Hard Spun closed his campaign with a solid second to eventual Horse-of-the-Year Curlin in the Breeders Cup Classic at Monmouth Park.

“I don’t take much credit for Hard Spun,” Jones said. “He did it all. He was just a really good horse. But I am proud of the fact that I had him at his best on the two biggest days – Derby Day and Breeders Cup Day.”

While known mainly for Hard Spun, Jones also has proved he knows how to handle the ladies. His Island Sand was second in the 2004 Kentucky Oaks before going on to win the Acorn in New York and the $1 million Delaware Handicap. Another Jones-trained filly, Ruby’s Reception, captured the 2003 Fantasy at Oaklawn.
Jones and his wife, the parents of four children, work closely together in their 20-horse operation, splitting time between Oaklawn in the winter and Delaware in the spring and summer.

Both Proud Spell and Eight Belles will be ridden by Gabriel Saez, the native of Panama who turned 20 on Feb. 1. He began riding in his native country in 2004, was the leading apprentice jockey in Panama in 2005, and came to the U.S. in February of 2006, making an immediate impact at Delaware Park.

“He’s so young he’s not impressed by anything,” Jones said. “We took him to Saratoga last year and I was worried that he might be intimidated. But it was no big deal to him. Just another race track. Then, before he rode Proud Spell in the Breeders Cup Juvenile Fillies, he came walking out, looked around, and wondered what all those people were doing there.

“But that’s because Saratoga and the Breeders Cup aren’t that big of a deal in Panama. The Kentucky Derby, though, is something else. They know about the Kentucky Derby in Panama, so he’s excited about that. I hope that’s a good thing.”