ESPN Horse Racing

It may be hard to believe that a 3-year-old thoroughbred who is undefeated in six starts, and a winner of five straight stakes races is currently 100-1 to take the Run for the Roses on the first Saturday in May, but that is exactly what the odds are on a colt named Sir Oscar at Bally's Kentucky Derby Future Book in Las Vegas.

If Sir Oscar was trained by a conditioner with the last name of Baffert, Lukas or Zito, it's very likely those odds would be lower. But even though 75-year-old Manual Azpurua has never started a horse in the Kentucky Derby, he has won over 3,000 races in his career and is confident the colt he manages will be a feature player in this year's Kentucky Derby drama.

Sir Oscar will have a chance to make a positive impact on his future-book odds a week from Saturday in the first major Derby prep of the year, the $250,000 Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream Park. There he will face two horses who are favored over him in the future odds and will likely garner more respect from the Gulfstream Park bettors: Holy Bull Stakes winner Second of June (12-1 in the Bally's Future Book) and Read The Footnotes (currently 30-1 to win the Derby), who scored in the Grade 2 Remsen at Aqueduct last November.

But even though Sir Oscar may be third choice in the Fountain of Youth, he certainly has nothing to be ashamed of. The winner of over $528,000 swept the Florida Stallion series in 2003 and won from distances of five and a half furlongs to a mile and a sixteenth. In his last race, the Nov. 15 Jack Price at Calder, he cut back to seven furlongs and smartly defeated 3-5 favorite Wynn Dot Comma, who was four-for-four entering that event. Wynn Dot Comma has since flattered Sir Oscar by winning the Grade 3 Spectacular Bid at Gulfstream last month.

Azpurua is confident that Sir Oscar will perform well in the Fountain of Youth, even though he hasn't raced in nearly three months.

"He's been training great," says Azpurua, who refers to a Jan. 30 workout to prove his point. "It looks like he likes Gulfstream. He worked a mile in 1:41 3/5 and worked the last eighth in :12 and change.

"He's put on some weight, but it's all muscle. I'm not worried about getting him a race. He's stayed at the track the whole time and galloped. He's almost ready."

Sir Oscar is named for his owner, Oscar Novo, who races the horse -- his only horse -- under the corporate name International Fair Play Inc. Azpurua describes him as "a one-man company with a one-horse stable." Novo, who owns the broadcast rights to soccer matches played in Argentina and Peru, grew up in Palermo, Argentina and went to the races there as a boy. Racing remained a hobby as he moved to Peru and later to Miami where he has owned horses off and on over the years. Novo, in fact, owned and bred Sir Oscar's mare, Miss Medallion, who won the Judy's Red Shoes stake at Calder in 1998.

"I also trained Miss Medallion for him," Azpurua notes. "My brother, who works with yearlings in Ocala, advised Mr. Novo to mate her with Halo's Image, which he did."

The result seems to be the perfect combination of middle-distance speed mixed with enough stamina to go at least nine furlongs, if not the mile-and-a-quarter Derby distance.

Azpurua, who maintains a 24-horse stable in Miami, learned the sport from his father, a director of racing in Venezuela. Born in 1929, he began training horses in 1948 for his mother Carlota at the age of 19 and soon saw much success there.

"I won more than 2,000 races in my country before I came here," he states proudly, "and I've won well over a thousand since I began racing here in 1980.

"When I started in Miami it was like starting all over again. Despite winning all those races in Venezuela, people here didn't know who I was. For a while I worked out of the trunk of my car."

Despite training more than 3,000 winners, Azpurua thinks Sir Oscar could be the best one he's ever had.

"Up until now my best horse was 40 years ago in Venezuela. His name was Straight Way and he won 17 of 21 races. He won every distance from six furlongs to a mile and a half. He beat them all. In a lot of ways Sir Oscar reminds me of him.

"Sir Oscar runs as fast as he needs to, to win. Nothing bothers him. He trains beautifully. People ask me what his stamina numbers are. I don't know and I don't want to know."

But what about those other numbers, those future book odds in Las Vegas? Does Azpurua pay any attention to those?

"I don't even think about it. What does Las Vegas know? All I know is that everything I ask him to do, he does it. They don't know how far or how good he can be."

Sir Oscar's chance to show them is just about here.