Giacomo's trainer hoping for another Derby surprise

	John Shirreffs (left) trained Giacomo, the shocking upset at last year's Kentucky Derby. Can he do it again with a new horse? Matthew Stockman/Getty Images
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A year ago, trainer John Shirreffs was largely unknown outside the California racing community. This was fine with Shirreffs, whose choice of profession grew from a love of animals, not a love of fame or money (although nobody runs from the latter). Then last May 1, everything changed. The Kentucky Derby will do that.

Giacomo, a gray 3-year-old colt named after rock star Sting's youngest son and trained by Shirreffs, grinded his way through a 20-horse Derby field torn asunder by a suicidal pace on the front and flashed first past the wire at 50-1 odds. The customary Churchill homestretch roar gave way to strange buzz, as if 150,000 people were saying in unison, "Who?''

On that sun-splashed afternoon, I found myself walking briskly alongside Shirreffs as he was hustled from the winner's circle through the Churchill paddock to the postrace press conference. He was wearing a blue Mill Ridge Farm baseball cap and a look of complete bewilderment that wouldn't leave his face for the better part of two weeks.

"As soon as your horse crosses the finish line [in first], you experience such a feeling of disbelief,'' said Shirreffs this week. "Then people begin sweeping you along here and there and you're just following instructions and you just go along in a state of confusion for three or four days.''

Or perhaps even longer. Shirreffs is back in the Derby hunt again this year, albeit not in quite the same manner as with Giacomo, who was a homebred owned by former music mogul Jerry Moss (friend of Sting's, get it?) and essentially a member of Shirreffs' family. This time around Shirreffs is one of those trainers whom wealthy owners call when they want to win a Derby. Ergo, in mid-February, owner Stan Fulton's racing manager, Eric Anderson, contacted Shirreffs and asked him to take over the training of 3-year-old A.P. Warrior, a disappointing son of A.P. Indy who had been beaten by nine lengths in his 2006 debut for trainer Eoin Harty.

This was a strange position for Shirreffs. Normally, owners with Derby Fever send their horses to someone like Bob Baffert, who has won three times at Churchill. On Saturday afternoon, Shirreffs will run A.P. Warrior against Kentucky Derby front-runner Brother Derek in the Santa Anita Derby. A writer asked Shirreffs a softball question: "Do you think there's a chance Stan Fulton gave you A.P. Warrior because you won the Kentucky Derby with Giacomo?''

Shirreffs laughed. "I think you could make that chance 100 percent,'' he said. "The Derby is a big race in this country. Winning it brings a lot of things.''

Mainstream sports fans find the Kentucky Derby on derby day, and thus are largely oblivious to the long road most owners and trainers travel just to get to the starting gate. Giacomo was Shirreffs' first Derby starter, and Shirreffs absorbed every moment of the experience long before winning the race. To hear him tell it now, it's as if he's still on the ride.