Pioneerof The Nile is proven star

Racing lore is full of hard-luck stories in which a jockey and his agent had to pick between top horses to ride and invariably chose the wrong one.

Jockey Garrett Gomez and his agent made that decision, choosing to ride Pioneerof The Nile over Dunkirk.

The popular choice would have been Dunkirk, who finished second to Quality Road in the Florida Derby. Dunkirk has run only three times, but might have the most potential in a 20-horse Kentucky Derby field. But that’s the rub. Gomez went with the performance resume of Pioneerof The Nile.

Pioneerof The Nile goes into the Derby on May 2 off four straight stakes wins, including the Santa Anita Derby. The Bob Baffert colt doesn’t break stopwatches. All he does is beat you in a street fight.

Pioneerof The Nile has yet to run on real dirt, only synthetic surfaces. Keep a close eye on his training at Churchill Downs. Two horses that Pioneerof The Nile pounded into submission in Southern California — I Want Revenge and Papa Clem — were shipped east and won the Wood Memorial and Arkansas Derby in their last starts. I like this angle as much as anything because it proves beyond a doubt that Pioneerof The Nile is a high-class colt.

Dunkirk would have been a sexy pick. He cost $3.7 million at auction and has run two higher Beyer ratings — 98 and 108 — than Pioneerof The Nile has in his life. But he carries the albatross of not having raced as a 2-year-old.

The last unraced 2-year-old to win the Kentucky Derby was Apollo in 1882.

The trainer angle comes into play, too. Baffert has won three Derbies. Todd Pletcher is 0-for-21 in the Derby, though it’s only a matter of time before he wins the Holy Grail of racing.

Another angle to choosing Pioneerof The Nile is the 2009 Breeders’ Cup. It’ll be at Santa Anita, which has a synthetic surface. That’s a big edge.

Gomez and Anderson can take heart that the Holy Grail was a chalice made of wood, not gold. In Pioneerof The Nile, they’ll ride a horse that has proven he’s a piece of hickory.

Richard Eng’s horse racing column is published Friday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He can be reached at rich_eng@hotmail.com.