It was tough, but for most of the muddy mile and a quarter of the 145th Kentucky Derby on May 4 at Churchill Downs, Mike Smith tried hard not to think about how much Omaha Beach would have enjoyed the day. The son of War Front won a maiden race by nine lengths in the slop at Santa Anita, then added the Arkansas Derby under similar conditions.Such history was rendered moot when Smith’s morning-line Derby favorite was scratched the Wednesday before the race. Omaha Beach cleared his throat and Richard Mandella got the message, then made the call to Smith with the bad news.“It was a tough call to get, but a much tougher call for Richard to make,” Smith said. “I felt really bad for him.”Smith, suddenly available, ended up on Cutting Humor, whose Sunland Derby was the fastest on the clock of any nine-furlong Kentucky Derby prep this year. That and a used mint julep cup got them 11th place at 24-1 in the Derby, which pretty much split the field scattered over more than 25 lengths, front to back. “I didn’t have a bad trip,” Smith said this week from home near Santa Anita. “I thought I might get a little part of it there for a little bit, but he kind of ran out of steam down the lane. As you know, the Derby’s a tough race, and there’s always a lot going on.”Smith was not being a wise guy. He knew there was enough “going on” in this particular Derby to prompt the board of stewards to disqualify the first-place finisher for the first time in the history of the race. Smith, who has ridden Derby winners Giacomo and Justify, was asked if he had a view of the incident for which Maximum Security paid the price.“I knew something happened,” Smith said. “But I’m not certain exactly what. You would think by now technology would have every possible angle covered in replay view, but we still don’t.“There was a chain reaction that seemed to cause everybody to move around a bit,” Smith continued. “That one horse gave us kind of a slight body check there and tipped me out, which took the wind out of our sails. But I wasn’t really going forward much at that point.”Smith was referring to the sudden rightward retreat of the 71-1 shot Bodexpress approaching the five-sixteenths pole, at which point Cutting Humor was only a couple of lengths behind Country House. While Cutting Humor faded in the gloom, Country House rambled on to be second, then was placed first upon the DQ of Maximum Security.“It’s the Derby, man. There’s always about 20 what-ifs after that race,” Smith said. “I hear people say it should be treated like any other race, but it’s not like any other race. That’s what makes it so hard.”Smith certainly made the 2018 Kentucky Derby look easy aboard Justify, who won by 2 1/2 lengths over a similarly sloppy racetrack. The son of Scat Daddy went on to add the Preakness and Belmont Stakes to become racing’s 13th winner of the Triple Crown.Justify’s Preakness came up an old-fashioned match race with Derby runner-up Good Magic. The two colts hooked up early, disappeared into the far turn, then emerged from heavy fog with nothing between them.“What people didn’t see was Good Magic pushing me way out in the track,” Smith said. “I didn’t want to get in a fight with him. I was thinking down the road to the next race. I asked my horse to do just enough to beat him, then I didn’t do much the last 100 yards.”Justify’s winning margin was half a length over the onrushing Bravazo, while Good Magic was two necks farther behind in a valiant fourth.“Bravazo ran a big race that day to be second, but if you watch me you’d see I was looking under my arm,” Smith said. “I knew he was running out of time.”Smith won his first Preakness in 1993 aboard Prairie Bayou, who had run a solid race to be second in the Kentucky Derby to Sea Hero. On Saturday, in the 144th running of the Pimlico classic, Smith will take the mount for the first time on Improbable, fifth as the 4-1 Derby favorite (fourth after the DQ) under Irad Ortiz, Jr. Drayden Van Dyke, Smith’s protégé, rode Improbable in his first four races for Bob Baffert.Smith is encouraged that Improbable was beaten only a length by Omaha Beach in the Arkansas Derby after acting up in the starting gate and breaking a step slow. He broke like an old pro in the Derby.“I think he has a real good chance,” Smith said. “It’s just possible he doesn’t like the slop he’s faced in his last two races.”The forecast for the Baltimore area calls for the possibility of a thunderstorm on Friday and clear on Saturday.“Sometimes when I ride one for the first time, they really love it,” Smith added. “I don’t know why, but it can really work for me. We all have a little different way of sitting, of holding our hands. As for tactics, I won’t know until we draw, or for that matter till we get into the middle of the race. That’s what makes it so much fun.”