LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Intermittent but at times heavy showers put a bit of a damper on training at both Churchill Downs and Keeneland on Thursday morning. No workouts were scheduled for any of the Kentucky Derby contenders at either venue, with about a dozen potential Derby starters still training over the Polytrack at Keeneland.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Bwana Bull, who is entered in the $100,000 Derby Trial on Saturday at Churchill Downs, may scratch from that race and is a "possibility" to run in the Kentucky Derby on May 5, trainer Jerry Hollendorfer said Thursday.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Xchanger, winner of the April 21 Federico Tesio Stakes, is only "20 percent" likely to run in the Kentucky Derby unless he is sold in the coming days, trainer and part-owner Mark Shuman said Thursday.

Shuman said there are several parties interested in buying the Exchange Rate colt, who has sufficient graded earnings to gain entry into a Kentucky Derby field that is likely to be oversubscribed. He said he could not predict if a deal would be finalized.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Julien Leparoux has been named to ride Sedgefield in the Kentucky Derby, trainer Darrin Miller told Churchill Downs officials Wednesday morning.

Sedgefield, one of two Derby prospects that Miller trains for Silverton Hills Farm, figures as one of the longer prices in the May 5 race, having finished fourth as the favorite in his last start, the April 6 Transylvania Stakes on the Keeneland turf course.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Funny, trainer Michael Matz was saying, what a difference a year and a horse make.

A year ago, just about everywhere Matz went all anyone wanted to know was how he could possibly be thinking Barbaro could win the Kentucky Derby off a - gasp - five-week layoff, which had not been done in 50 years.

All Barbaro did was go out and win the Derby here at Churchill Downs by 6 1/2 lengths.

Now, a year later, the success of Matz and Barbaro has made the lengthy layoffs of several contenders for this year's Derby seem not quite so questionable.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - As of Wednesday, only five of the 20 horses expected to compete in the 2007 Kentucky Derby were stabled at Churchill Downs. The others were scattered about the country, with Nobiz Like Shobiz in New York, Stormello and Tiago in California, and nearly a dozen more based up the road at Keeneland.

But among that handful of Derby hopefuls training at Churchill are the two likely favorites, Curlin and Street Sense, who both went to the track Wednesday for the first time since turning in impressive five-furlong works earlier in the week.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Trainer Jamie Sanders entered Teuflesberg in Saturday's Derby Trial Stakes at Churchill Downs, where he would run if it appears he is going to be excluded from an oversubscribed Kentucky Derby the following Saturday. If there are defections from the Derby field before Saturday, Teuflesberg would be scratched from the Derby Trial in favor of the Derby, Sanders said.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The connections of Lexington Stakes winner Slew's Tizzy are "very much leaning toward not running" the colt in the May 5 Kentucky Derby, said trainer Greg Fox on Wednesday.

"The horse is doing great, but unless something radically changes in the next day or two, we have pretty much decided against running," Fox, a licensed veterinarian, said from his farm adjacent to the Thoroughbred Training Center in Lexington, Ky. "We expect to make a firm decision by Friday."

Joe LaCombe owns and bred Slew's Tizzy,

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - There is a scene depicted in the baseball book, "Ball Four," where author Jim Bouton watches a young teammate taking imaginary swings in the clubhouse before the Seattle Pilots' first game of the 1969 American League season.

Bouton, an aging veteran, later wrote that he caught himself thinking something like this: "If you don't have it down by now, son, you never will."

With all the graded stakes races preceding the May 5 Kentucky Derby now having been run, far more than the maximum of 20 horses are still pointing for the race, leading to the likelihood that several horses will be excluded from the Derby when entries are taken May 2 at Churchill Downs.