CAN CAME HOME COME HOME ON TIME?

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

ARCADIA - You've got to love this youngster they call Came Home, this latest Great California Hope, this apparent horse of destiny.

Whether you've got to love him when you're standing at the betting window before next month's Kentucky Derby is up for debate.

He has aggressive speed. He has a fighter's heart. He has smart, passionate owners. He has the West Coast's most underappreciated trainer. He has California's best big-race jockey. He and his team have the kind of backstory that makes you think a Kentucky Derby victory is meant to be.

Unfortunately, Came Home is going to have to call on all of those qualities to win America's greatest thoroughbred race.

Came Home scored an admirable, entertaining and popular victory Saturday in the $750,000 Santa Anita Derby, going past pacesetter Mayakovsky and repelling a rally by Easy Grades to win by 2 1/4 lengths in front of 36,025 fans who had made him the favorite.

``It looked like a struggle,'' jockey Chris McCarron admitted, ``but he did it very nicely.''

What Came Home didn't do was silence the legitimate questions about his ability to handle the Kentucky Derby's 1 1/4-mile distance on May 4 at Churchill Downs.

Yes, almost every 3-year-old is a question mark going 1 1/4 miles early in the season. Yes, pedigree analysis is an inexact science and the stopwatch sometimes lies. And yes, intangibles can make up for a horse's shortcomings, as with any other athlete.

But how can you ignore the obvious?

Came Home negotiated the Santa Anita Derby's 1 1/8 miles in a way that suggested this was his limit.

The 65th Santa Anita Derby was run in 1:50.02, making it the slowest since the 26th. The final eighth of a mile was run in 13.32 seconds, among the slowest ever.

Handicappers refer to the final fractional clocking of a race as the ``come-home time'' and interpret it for indications of the winner's stamina or lack thereof. Late Saturday, handicappers were looking hard at how slowly Came Home came home. They were concluding that the colt who will carry the California banner to Louisville will get the staggers as he tries to lug it the crucial next 10 furlongs.

Distance was the question going into the Santa Anita Derby. Distance was the question coming out.

Of course, Came Home's people said they were satisfied by what they saw.

They argued that Came Home won despite being less than 100 percent fit after missing a workout in March following a stall accident. They argued that he always does what he must do to win. They argued that the time was misleading.

``I think if you place a lot of emphasis on that, you're making a mistake, because the track today is not as fast as some Santa Anita tracks you've seen in the past,'' McCarron said. ``I think ... he might have needed this race (because he wasn't completely fit). You know, (jockey) Bill Hartack used to say time only means anything when you're looking through those (prison) bars.''

Was the Santa Anita track playing slower than usual on this cloudy but dry Saturday? The afternoon's other 1 1/8-mile race, the San Bernardino Handicap won by Bosque Redondo and McCarron, was clocked in 1:49.11, making it the slowest San Bernardino in 19 years and about 1 2/5 seconds slower than recent runnings.

But even if you assume that the slow San Bernardino clocking reflects the track condition, and you adjust the Santa Anita Derby time by 1 2/5 seconds, you're left with a Santa Anita Derby run in a decidedly average 1:48 3/5.

Maybe the best way for an optimist to shrug off the time concerns is to note that the last time the Santa Anita Derby was slower than this, 1963 winner Candy Spots (1:50 1/5) went on to run a troubled and close third in the Kentucky Derby and win the Preakness Stakes.

In other words, sometimes you never know.

It sounded Saturday as if the top three finishers would go on to the Kentucky Derby. Easy Grades, the runner-up, who briefly took a narrow lead on the turn into the stretch, had a possible excuse in an equipment problem that cost jockey Gary Stevens some control. California-bred Lusty Latin, the third-place horse, stormed home from eighth and last on the backstretch and galloped out as if he'd like 1 1/4 miles.

Came Home will get the most attention of the California-based horses because he won the prep race that produced three of the past five Kentucky Derby winners. He deserves the attention and so do McCarron, trainer Paco Gonzalez and breeders and principal owners Trudy McCaffery and John Toffan. The story of how McCaffery and Toffan tried repeatedly to sell the colt, only to wind up ``stuck'' with the $870,000 earner, makes you think providence is on their side.

Let's see if providence makes up for a slow come-home time.