LOUISVILLE, Ky. - There’s a chance that Bellamy Road will fall flatter than the Yankees pitching staff in Saturday’s $2 million Kentucky Derby, but there’s an even better chance that the George Steinbrenner-owned colt will roll to an uncontested victory in the 1 ¼-mile race and establish himself as a serious candidate to sweep the Triple Crown.

Handicapping often demands that the artist — yes, it is an art informed by science — look beyond the obvious in determining the winner before the race is run. But as Smarty Jones demonstrated last year, it’s possible to strain so hard to see the subtle that you fail to apprehend what should be crystal clear. How else to explain why a horse who had won all six of his lifetime starts with relative ease was picked by relatively few public handicappers and other so-called “experts” to win the Derby?

This is the crux in assessing Bellamy Road’s prospects. If you believe what you saw in his effortless-looking 17 ½-length victory in the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct racetrack on April 9, it’s hard to believe he can be beaten.

Bellamy Road cruised to the front that day and was never challenged while covering the 1 1/8-mile course in 1:47 — snapping the stakes record and tying the track record even though he never felt jockey Javier Castellano’s whip through the stretch. Many observers — this one included — felt that the race was the most impressive Derby prep in decades.

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But the glass-is-half-empty crowd can find plenty of cause to doubt that Bellamy Road’s romp will translate to Derby victory.

The main argument in opposition is that everything went Bellamy Road’s way that day at Aqueduct. He was able to grab an uncontested lead and Going Wild, the horse who figured to engage him at the top of the stretch, faded without ever mounting a serious bid. This left the long-striding Bellamy Road free to roll along in his comfort zone — a place in which he can clearly accomplish great things.

This speaks to a second, more-important point: Bellamy Road hasn’t been tested in five of his six lifetime races, all of which he won easily. The only time he was pushed on the front, in the Breeders’ Cup Futurity last October at Keeneland, he faded badly, finishing seventh, 12 lengths behind the winner.

KENTUCKY DERBY NBC will televise the race from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. ET on Saturday.

Whomever does the string-pulling for Steinbrenner’s Kinsman Stable had a “Boss”-like reaction to the fiasco and transferred Bellamy Road from trainer Michael Dickinson to proven Triple Crown conditioner Nick Zito immediately afterward.

The circumstances surrounding the transfer have never been fully explained, and are again open to debate.

If you are a Bellamy Road believer, you likely subscribe to the theory that owner already had Triple Crown aspirations for the horse and felt that he was not adequately prepared for the race, his first against top competition.

But if you’re in the opposing camp, the Keeneland race is your biggest cause for optimism, suggesting that when Bellamy Road comes under pressure — as he almost certainly will in the Derby — he folds like a paper airplane.

The question cannot be answered with any certainty before the Derby, as Zito himself noted this week in discussing the prospects of the five horses he will saddle in the race.

“It’s going to be interesting, because that’s what measures your greatness,” he said. “There’s no question he’s going to be challenged. We’ll just have to see how he handles it.”

Complicating the picture is the entry of Spanish Chestnut, a speedy colt with seemingly no chance of winning the Derby. It’s hard to imagine why his owners — Derrick Smith and Michael Tabor — would enter him in the race after three successive collapses against much softer competition than he will face in the Derby without a closer look at the full field. The proper response when your eyes fall on Blue Grass Stakes winner Bandini is “aha!” since that colt is owned by the same two men.

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