LOUISVILLE – During his brief stay at Churchill Downs, the pride of Northern California has been regarded more as a curiosity than a legitimate contender for Saturday’s 135th Kentucky Derby. Everybody thinks it’s, well, sweet that weight-loss magnate Jenny Craig is the owner of a colt named Chocolate Candy. Just the other day a tourist asked hotwalker Butch Winston if the brown colt likes M&M’s.

“Nope,” said Winston. “No chocolate for him. It has caffeine in it and horses can’t run with caffeine in their systems.”

But surely he has a sweet tooth, right?

“Nope,” said Galen May, a retired Golden Gate Fields employee who sometimes helps trainer Jerry Hollendorfer. “He doesn’t like peppermints and he won’t even eat sugar cubes. Carrots are enough of a treat for him.”

Surely Ms. Craig would approve of that, although she makes it clear on her website that her diet and chocolate are not mutually exclusive. She says it’s possible to love chocolate and still lose weight, and even offers a recipe for double-chocolate cupcakes.

But wait. As amusing as this sort of talk may be, it has nothing to do with Chocolate Candy’s chances in the Derby. Asked about those prospects after working the colt in a crisp :59 1/5 for five eighths of a mile on Monday, jockey Mike Smith said, “I think my horse has a chance to run well here. Handling the track is the key, and now we know he can run well here.”

A son of the Argentina sire Candy Ride, who now stands at Hill n’ Dale Farm near Lexington, Ky., Chocolate Candy is out of the mare Crownette, a daughter of 1977 Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew.

Slew figures in the most bittersweet memory of Hallendorfer’s long career as the training king of the Bay Area. In 1998, Hollendorfer thought he had the Kentucky Derby winner in Event of the Year, a son of Slew who got knocked out of the race when he fractured a knee in a Churchill Downs workout only days before the Derby.

So no wonder Hollendorfer became alarmed Monday when the track siren went off as Chocolate Candy was finishing his workout. At the time, Hollendorfer was in a tall clocker’s stand, but he couldn’t see across the track because of all the tents that have been erected in the Churchill infield.

He was quickly told that a horse had thrown its rider and galloped away until it collided with another horse near the finish line. The accident happened at the finish line near the outer rail just as Chocolate Candy was rolling toward the finish line on the inner rail. “We both saw the horses go down,” said Smith. “Chocolate Candy just looked that way for a second, but he turned back and kept on going.”

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The work was the day’s second fastest at the distance, trailing only Friesan Fire’s blistering :57 4/5, but still the media didn’t pay much attention. Maybe they don’t take Chocolate Candy seriously because of his name. Or maybe it’s because they regard Craig as no more than a dilettante. The only previous Derby horse that ran in her name – a colt named Rock and Roll that she owned with Madeline Paulson – finished 14th in 1998.

But horsemen everywhere respect Hollendorfer, who’s always mentioned with  Todd Pletcher and Bill Mott when the topic is  “Best Trainer Never to Win the Kentucky Derby.” He has twice won the Kentucky Oaks, the so-called “Kentucky Derby for Fillies,” but never been closer than fifth in three Derby attempts.

When Chocolate Candy won Golden Gate’s two major Kentucky Derby preps – the California Derby on Jan. 17 and the El Camino Real Derby on Feb. 14 – he was ridden by Russell Baze, the Hall of Fame jockey who has teamed with Hollendorfer to dominate the Bay Area for the last 20 years.

But when Hollendorfer decided to run Chocolate Candy against the formidable Pioneerof The Nile in the Santa Anita Derby, he replaced Baze with Julio Rosaro. The colt ran beautifully that day, flying down the stretch to close within a length of Pioneerof The Nile at the wire. Retired jockey great Gary Stevens was convinced that had the pace not been so slow, Chocolate Candy would have prevailed.

Asked why he’s using Smith for the Derby instead of Baze, Hollendorfer said it’s simply a matter of Derby experience. Smith has ridden in the Derby 15 times since 1984, winning in 2005 with the longshot Giacomo. In his only two Derby rides, Baze has finished 13th and 14th.

“Nothing against Russell,” says Hallendorfer, “but this time I wanted somebody who has ridden the Derby a lot and won it. You don’t get too many chances to win this thing, you know.”

As always, the Derby will be the first time the 3-year-olds are asked to run a mile and a quarter. So far none have run farther than a mile and an eighth. Chocolate Candy’s pedigree and his race in the Santa Anita Derby suggest he’ll love the extra distance. And since there’s always a fast pace in the Kentucky Derby, he’ll be able to drop back and make his run in the last three-eighths of a mile.

The weather forecast for Derby Day is clear, with temperatures in the high 60s, but, says Galen May, “I’m hoping it rains. He worked really easy in the mud here. That mud is just made for him.”

When Chocolate Candy gets wet, it turns to…what? Syrup? Never mind. It’s time to ignore the name and concentrate on the horse. He deserves more attention than he has been getting. He just might be sitting on one sweet race.