HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Whether trainer John Servis will have his first Kentucky Derby starter since winning the race in 2004 with Smarty Jones could be determined over the next nine days. His most advanced 3-year-old prospects are scheduled to see action in two key preps, with Adirondack King on deck for the Grade 2, $500,000 Rebel Stakes at Oaklawn Park on Saturday, and Ill Conceived being pointed for the Grade 3, $500,000 Vinery Racing Spiral at Turfway on March 24.

Here is some advice for you all you future-book fanciers. Stop being so infatuated with “all others” and start looking at all those horses that ran in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.

ARCADIA, Calif. – One of the reasons Bob Baffert rose so quickly through the ranks of Thoroughbred trainers, all the way to the Hall of Fame, is that he relies so much on instincts. Like a quarterback who comes to the line of scrimmage and calls an audible, or a basketball player who feels he’s in the groove and launches up shot after shot that hit nothing but net, Baffert’s approach to training is far more art than science.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Gemologist and Currency Swap, two of the more highly regarded members of the 2-year-old class of 2011, will make their belated 3-year-old debuts against one another in Friday’s $80,000 allowance feature at Gulfstream Park. The main event, which could ultimately serve as a Kentucky Derby prep for one or both horses, drew a field of only five 3-year-olds and will be decided at one mile.

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HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – The Winchell and Asmussen families have been doing business together for three decades. Keith Asmussen gave such Winchell-owned runners as Tight Spot, Olympio, and Sea Cadet their first lessons in racing at his training center in Laredo, Texas. And his son, Steve Asmussen, would later train major stakes winners Summerly, Cuvee, and Pyro for the Winchells.

Trainer Steve Margolis’s quiet period early in 2012 came to an end the last two racing weeks at Fair Grounds. Last week alone, Margolis won three races in four days, among them the Allen Lacombe Memorial with Miz Ida, but it was second-time starter Cigar Street’s two-turn maiden win Saturday that created the greatest buzz.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – In the wake of Union Rags’ brilliant performance last month in the Grade 2 Fountain of Youth, it sounded like Gulfstream Park’s racing secretary, Dan Bork, would be hard pressed to assemble even a handful of 3-year-olds willing to take on the division leader, even for $1 million, in the Grade 1 Florida Derby on March 31. Now it appears the field size will not only be respectable but that Union Rags may not have any walk in the park in his final Kentucky Derby prep.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Creative Cause and Bodemeister, the one-two finishers in the San Felipe Stakes on Saturday at Santa Anita, are expected to meet again in the Grade 1, $750,000 Santa Anita Derby on April 7, but that race will not include Fed Biz, who on Monday was pulled from the Kentucky Derby trail by his trainer, Bob Baffert.

Fed Biz missed the San Felipe with a hind-end issue, and is still not moving to Baffert’s satisfaction. So, he is out of the running for the May 5 Kentucky Derby.

For many connections of lightly-raced 3-year-olds, the strains of “My Old Kentucky Home,” played during the Kentucky Derby post parade on the first Saturday in May, are nothing more than a siren song.

“Derby Fever” is contagious during the opening months of the racing season and many promising youngsters are rushed onto the Triple Crown trail before they are ready.