ESPN

It was a warm February afternoon, one that felt like April but conjured up visions of May while shrouding March in uncertainty.

That confusing little time warp took place Saturday in the minutes before, during and after the 1:44.23 it took Alpha to confirm his status as New York’s top Kentucky Derby contender by notching an easy victory in the $200,000 Withers.

Following up a 2 ½-length win in the Count Fleet last month, Godolphin Racing’s Alpha cruised one step closer to the Derby by launching a strong, wide rally and taking charge in the stretch to win by 3 ¼ lengths as an odds-on 2-5 favorite ($2.70).

Realistically, with 44-1 longshot Speightscity finishing second, he probably didn’t beat much in the Withers. But with a runner-up finish in last year’s Champagne vouching for his class, Alpha certainly seems like one of the better candidates to be in the starting gate on the first Saturday in May at Churchill Downs.

“There are some good 3-year-olds out there,” said Alpha’s trainer, Kiaran McLaughlin, “and I hope we’re one of them.”

Finding out just how good Alpha can be might take a little longer than expected as McLaughlin said he would talk with Godolphin racing manager Simon Crisford before mapping out Alpha’s next start. The Grade 3 $400,000 Gotham on March 3 at Aqueduct seems a likely target, especially since starting spots in the Derby are based on graded stakes earnings if more than 20 horses plan to run. Yet McLaughlin also raised the possibility of shipping Alpha to a different part of the country, especially if Mother Nature issues some payback -- a.k.a. a couple of blizzards -- for all the nice, unseasonable weather in recent weeks.

“He’s here in New York right now, but he could relocate, or he could run back in the Gotham in a month. We’ll just have to talk about it. At least we got $120,000 in graded earnings going forward to the first Saturday in May,” McLaughlin said. “That’s important.”

What’s probably more important right now is for a 3-year-old to show some progress from race to race, and, to no one’s surprise, Alpha also earned high marks from his trainer in that area. Alpha’s behavior in the starting gate has been a concern for McLaughlin since the colt had a tantrum prior to the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (when he was 11th), but Saturday, aided by breaking from the outside post, Alpha was a choir boy.

“He was great in the gate. We’ve been schooling him a lot. It worked out today. Obviously it’s nice to be outside, but at some point he’s going to have to be inside, so we’ll see how our schooling is working,” McLaughlin said. “I think he improved some from his last race because of how wide he was both trips. He gets a better grade for this race. If it was a ‘B’ last time, he gets an ‘A’ this time.”

And in a year in which the reigning two-year-old champ already has a loss at three, A’s in February just might pay off handsomely in May.

A chalk-fest at Aqueduct

As nice as it was to see three stakes on Saturday’s card, there wasn’t much value at the betting windows.

Prior to Alpha’s win at 2-5, Nicole H, a 1-2 favorite, made it 4-for-4 on the inner track by capturing the $100,000 Correction by 2 ½ lengths and returning $3.

In the Grade 3, $150,000 Toboggan, Mike Repole’s Calibrachoa took the race for a second straight year and improved his record to 4-for-4 on the inner track. Diski Dance, at 19-1 was second, while Caixa Eletronica, who was coupled with Calibrachoa, was third.

The Repole ($2.90) entry was also sent off at 1-2 and returned $4 as the front end of a daily double with Alpha in the Withers.

“It was nice to win the Calibrachoa stakes again,” joked Repole, whose 5-year-old had not raced since finishing third last November in the Cigar Mile. “He was a nice $40,000 claim [in Nov. 2010]. We wanted to give him and he ran very well. We’ll keep an eye on the other graded sprints for him in New York, like the Tom Fool [March 3] and Carter [April 7].

Overdriven to miss Triple Crown

Repole also said Overdriven, who was one of last year’s most promising 2-year-olds until he was taken out of training in late August, probably will not race until June at the earliest.

“Overdriven and Stay Thirsty [Repole’s Travers winner] will be sent to [trainer] Todd Pletcher’s barn on March 1 to start training. We’re looking at all the major races for Stay Thirsty, but Overdriven is more likely to concentrate on sprints like the King’s Bishop [at Saratoga].”

After having two of the top Triple Crown candidates last winter in Stay Thirsty and Uncle Mo, it’s looking more and more like Repole will only be a spectator at this year’s Derby.

Repole’s How Do I Win set the pace in the Withers but faded to fourth, effectively ending his Triple Crown hopes. That leaves only Our Entourage, who was fifth in last year’s Remsen. Repole said Our Entourage would run in a Florida turf race in a couple of weeks and if all goes well, the next stop would be the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct (April 7) as a dress rehearsal for the Derby.

It’s January, even if it feels like April, and with a new year comes a new array of Triple Crown hopefuls.

While many of the top-ranked 3-year-olds -- horses like Union Rags, Hansen and even Remsen winner O’Prado Again - are working on their suntans in Florida while they prep for their 3-year-old debut, here in New York the road to Louisville officially opened Saturday with the latest renewal of the Count Fleet.

Not one to be confused with the Wood Memorial, the $150,000 Count Fleet can be a stepping stone to bigger and better things, a scenario that may come to fruition through Saturday’s talented winner, Alpha.

At two, Alpha won at first asking at Saratoga and seemed one of the division’s better runners when he finished second to Union Rags in the Champagne. A nearly invisible 11th place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile relegated the Godolphin runner to the B List, but his 2 1/2-length score in the mile and 70-yard Count Fleet put him back on the fast track to Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May.

“Alpha was just a great win. We’ll probably leave him there [in New York],” said trainer Kiaran McLauglin, who also won Saturday’s co-featured Busanda for 3-year-old fillies with Captivating Lass. Despite having two stakes winners on the card, McLaughlin spoke by phone from, where else, Florida. “We’ll probably go to the Withers [Feb. 4] and on to the Wood [April 7]. For sure we’ll have to talk to the Godolphin people, but that’s what we’ll look at for right now.”

Stephanoatsee looked to be a fast-closing second, but that was more reflective of the way the pacesetting Il Villano, who was exposed as a sprinter, tired in the final yards and was passed by the Graham Motion-trained Stephanoatsee. No one was beating Alpha, a 4-5 favorite, on this spring-like day in New York.

“Turning for home, he responded every time I asked him,” jockey Ramon Dominguez said. “He galloped out so strong that I had to get an outrider to pull him up. You always have to go just by what you have seen, but judging by today he should be able to handle more distance.”

And so, the Big Apple’s chase for the Kentucky Derby began rather fittingly with a horse named Alpha. Whether it will end with him is a question that most likely will not be answered until spring truly arrives.