Kentucky Derby 2012: Daddy Nose Best, Creative Cause, I'll Have Another, Sabercat All With L.A. Connections

There are four horses with Los Angeles connections at the 2012 Kentucky Derby. Let's take a look at each of them!

Creative Cause is owned by Heinz Steinmann, who resides in Wrightwood, California and currently has 11/1 odds and is one of the horses who are favored to win it all. His work is perfect up to this point according to Deirdre B. Biles of Bloodhorse.

Trainer Mike Harrington called Creative Cause's workout "perfect in my book" after the gray/roan colt covered a half mile in :47 4/5 at Churchill Downs April 30 over a fast track. It was the final serious training move for the 3-year-old son of Giant's Causeway prior to the May 5 Kentucky Derby.

Creative Cause's splits were :12 3/5, :24 3/5, and :36. He galloped out five furlongs in 1:01 1/5 and looked comfortable doing it. There appeared to be no negative effects from the loss of a shoe during his plane ride from his California base to the Bluegrass State.

"I figured he would go in :47 and change, so that's good," Harrington said. "It was just a maintenance work, but we wanted him to go fast enough to show that he's on his game, which he definitely did. He did that fairly easily; he could have gone a lot faster."

Daddy Nose Best has jockey Garrett Gomez to lead them, who currently lives in Duarte, California and currently has 15/1 odds overall. He put in some good work earlier yesterday.

Time only matters when you’re in jail, the old adage goes, so one shouldn’t be fooled by Daddy Nose Best’s modest final clocking. This was simply a maintenance breeze, and although the final time was more than a full second slower than his stablemate Sabercat produced 30 minutes earlier, the manner in which Daddy Nose Best finished and galloped out set him apart from the others.

Daddy Nose Best was reserved coming away from the pole, completing his opening eighth- and quarter-miles in 13.36 and 25.70 seconds respectively with exercise rider Carlos Rosas glancing down to check the stopwatch on his left wrist at every pole. Daddy Nose Best picked up the pace effortlessly once settling into the stretch, covering his final two furlongs in 23.53 seconds without any encouragement before galloping out very willingly into the turn, completing five eighths in 1:02.45 and pulling up six furlongs in 1:16.80.

I'll Have Another is trained by Doug O'Neill, who currently resides in Santa Monica, California and has 15/1 odds overall. Ed Zieralski of U-T San Diego files this report about what O'Neill thinks of his jockey.

O’Neill and other trainers such as Vladimir Cerin have compared Gutierrez to veteran jockey Rafael Bejarano in the way Gutierrez prepares for a race and the way he rides. They praise his memory, his ability to put horses in the right spot in a race, but especially they talk about how he studies the horse he’s riding and all the other horses in the race.

"He’s always prepared when he comes to ride a race," O’Neill said. "The way I see it, Mario turned this colt around. We’re all in Mario’s camp right now."

Sabercat has jockey Corey Nakatani who was born in Covina, California and lives in the Winchell Thoroughbreds at San Marino, California. Sabercat currently has 35/1 odds.

You can find much more information on the official Kentucky Derby website.