GIACOMO NEEDS A 'CAP-PER.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

ARCADIA - Those who think Giacomo is under pressure to win the Santa Anita Handicap on Saturday, absolutely must win the Big 'Cap to prove his Kentucky Derby victory last spring was no fluke, are advised to consider a modern racetrack parable.

This racetrack story has the rare virtue of being factual as well as true.

A few years ago, a long-shot Kentucky Derby winner was on the way back to his barn as the cheers were fading when the colt encountered hecklers in front of the Churchill Downs corporate suites.

A fan drunk on mint juleps or losing bets stepped up to the rail and yelled at the man holding the reins, ``He'll never win another race!''

The handler thought for maybe one-fifth of a second and replied with not-quite-smug serenity, ``He doesn't have to.''

Giacomo won the Kentucky Derby last May, the slender gray coming from way behind to spring a 50-1 surprise in a race that sort of fell into his lap, a race where almost all of the expected contenders had serious excuses.

This time, the cheers were still in the air when drunks and all-too-sober handicappers alike declared, ``He'll never win another race!''

It wasn't that the horse-racing world didn't want him to go on and become a star. The horse-racing world lusts for nothing more than for every Derby winner to go on and become a star.

Especially one with so much human interest swirling about him.

Mike Smith, the jockey, was a Hall of Famer who had won just about every major race but had suffered nothing but hard luck in the Derby.

John Shirreffs, the trainer, was a New England racing-family scion who was on his way to Hawaii to become a surfer when he got waylaid in California and the game dragged him back in.

Frank Leal, the groom, was an up-by-the-bootstraps story from a Mexican ranch who had lost the tips of the fingers on his right hand when a steer he was roping tugged and squeezed the twine around the saddle horn.

And Jerry and Ann Moss, the owners, were affable jet-setters from the pop-music world, Jerry being the co-founder with Herb Alpert of A&M Records.

But, in Giacomo, everybody was telling Jerry Moss he had a one-hit wonder on his hands.

Darn it if, so far, the skeptics have not been proved wrong.

The horse that won only one race in seven starts in California before the Derby is winless in three tries since. He was third, but a distant third, in the Preakness as Afleet Alex broke a tackle at the top of the stretch to win. He was seventh, backing up at the finish, in the Belmont as Afleet Alex removed any doubt he was the spring's best 3-year-old. Then, after a few months off to recover from surgery to remove bone chips from his forelegs, he was third, a mid-race surge giving the Santa Anita crowd a brief thrill, in last month's Strub Stakes.

Just to rub in the idea that the 2005 Derby had been a flukish event, last-place finisher High Limit was the horse to bury Giacomo in the Strub.

So now Giacomo comes to the Big 'Cap, the $1 million race whose 68 previous runnings feature victories by the likes of Seabiscuit, Affirmed, Spectacular Bid and John Henry. It's a solid, nine-horse field, including the winners of the Strub and the San Pasqual (High Limit), the San Antonio (Spellbinder), the Hollywood Gold Cup and Sunshine Millions Classic (Lava Man) and a Breeders' Cup Juvenile (Wilko).

Because the Big 'Cap is a 1 1/4-miler like the Derby, because he has a credible comeback effort under his belt, and because he's a more masculine-looking and possibly better horse than a year ago, Giacomo is coming up to a now-or-never race.

``He might have to win more than one (more big race),'' said D. Wayne Lukas, the Hall of Fame trainer who knows something about silencing skeptics, since Charismatic was the horse in the ``He doesn't have to'' story. ''If he wins the Big 'Cap, that'll be a good step in the right direction.''

As for Giacomo's people, the closest they'll come to admitting that Giacomo's Derby was a lightning strike is Jerry Moss saying, ``The Derby god is a charitable god,'' and Shirreffs saying, ''Maybe it was like the (1980) U.S. Olympic hockey team.''

Giacomo wouldn't be the first Derby winner, or even the first recent Derby winner, to struggle in his post-roses career. Gato del Sol, Strike the Gold and Sea Hero were major flops, and Funny Cide still is.

If Giacomo is as good or lucky on the first Saturday in March, 2006,as he was on the first Saturday in May 2005, he won't join that sorry list.

``If he never wins another race, we'll still love him,'' Moss said Thursday morning at Santa Anita. ``But it would be great to see him powering through the stretch and picking everybody up again.''

CAPTION(S):

photo, box

Photo:

(color) Ever since winning the Kentucky Derby in 2005, Giacomo has not won a race in three tries.

Jeff Haynes/AFP/Getty Images

Box:

BIG 'CAP LINEUP