About the same time foals by horses like Storm Cat, A.P. Indy, Danzig, Unbridled and the other elite stallions housed on the finest farms in Kentucky were hitting the ground in the spring of 2002, a runty looking thing out of a former $4,000 claimer by a sire named Barricade was born way off the beaten track in Colorado. Co-owner and breeder Harry Veruchi was pretty sure he knew what he had: nothing special.

He didn't dare compare the undersized colt that would be named Cajun Pepper to the foals who would grow to become the hottest prospects on the Kentucky Derby trail. He knew the game well enough to know such things just didn't happen. Veruchi would have been content to basically give the horse away. He tried to sell Cajun Pepper in a package with his dam for $1,500. He didn't find any takers.

When he couldn't sell Cajun Pepper he decided to race him.

"I didn't have any high hopes; I really didn't," Veruchi said. "I'd have been very happy for him to just turn out to be a cheap horse I could have some fun with."

Today, it's the buyers who are coming to Veruchi, co-owner Eli Diamant and trainer Ramon Gonzalez. The thing is, the horse Veruchi once couldn't hardly give away isn't for sale at any price. Undefeated and untested in five career starts, he's too close to the Kentucky Derby to let someone else enjoy the ride.

Is there another Smarty Jones out there? Probably not. Those type of horses and that kind of story comes around, maybe, once every 50 years. But there is, at the very least, a candidate to be the next Smarty Jones, a fast horse from very humble beginnings who, while having a lot more to prove, has looked phenomenal in the minor leagues.

Tracks don't get much smaller than Arapahoe Park and breeding states don't get any more insignificant than Colorado. But that's where Cajun Pepper came from. He surfaced in a July 11 maiden last year at Arapahoe in Aurora, Colorado with a $6,500 purse and ran off and hid from five challengers. He later won the Colorado Futurity before moving up to what must have seemed like the big time. He later took on eight horses in a trial race at Sunland Park and then whipped nine challengers in the $161,331 Riley Allison Futurity, also at Sunland. His high Beyer figure is an 89, good, but not great.

"We don't know where this will end," Diamant said. "For the moment, he's never really been challenged. We don't know how far he can go. But he's winning so easily and he's training excellent."

There are several hurdles Cajun Pepper has yet to clear. He's never run beyond 6 ½ furlongs and he hasn't exactly been taking on future Hall of Famers. But enough people have been impressed that the owners have fielded offers for as much as $250,000 from people wanting to buy the gelding.

The partners had a similar experience when they brought a horse named Daring Pegasus to Churchill Downs as a 2-year-old. He ran second in the 2000 WHAS Stakes and, afterward, they were offered $550,000 for a 90 percent interest in the horse. They turned it down. Daring Pegasus is still around, plugging away in $6,000 claimers at Sunland. Veruchi said he regrets that decision not to sell, but he's not about to change his mind with Cajun Pepper.

"Eli and I don't need the money, Veruchi said. "We don't want to lose this chance that we have."

Cajun Pepper is training regularly at Sunland Park in New Mexico and will make his 3-year-old debut there in the Feb. 27 $100,000 Borderland Stakes. Next will be the March 28 Winstar Derby, a $500,000 race at Sunland. Neither race is graded, meaning Cajun Pepper could need to earn some money in a graded race to make it into the Kentucky Derby field. With that in mind, the owners are also pointing to the April 16 Arkansas Derby, a race won last year by Smarty Jones.

"Yes, we have compared him ourselves to Smarty Jones," Diamant said. "We are going a similar way. He had five races and was five times unbeaten. We're coming from an unknown racetrack, which is even lower than Philadelphia Park. It seems to be a very similar story."

In the meantime, Diamant and Veruchi have stopped trying to explain how a horse like Cajun Pepper can have any ability at all. Even Smarty Jones came from a track that occasionally produces a good horse and was the product of an untested sire out of a stakes winning dam.

"How do you explain it? How do you explain it when you hit the lottery," Diamant said. "It's pretty much the same thing. Nature, sometimes, brings some wonder."