It’s looking very much like the Kentucky Derby will feature a full gate of 20 starters when Steve Buttleman, the official bugler of Churchill Downs, blows the call to the post. It is equally likely that a full 20% of that field will come from the barn of trainer Nick Zito.

Multiple entries by one trainer are not uncommon, not in this age of super trainers with huge stables full of expensive horses. D. Wayne Lukas sent five to the gate in 1996 and Todd Pletcher saddled four in 2000. But what makes Zito’s feat special is that his horses have been near the top of everyone’s lists all year; for months, to talk Derby has been to talk Zito. Though anything can happen on Derby day, the New York City native certainly looks like a good bet to win his third Run for the Roses.

“If we don’t get no. 3 now, then I’ll have to have Secretariat himself,” Zito told reporters outside his barn at Churchill Downs yesterday. “There’s no question. I can’t ask the man upstairs to give me a better a shot at this. If it happens, it happens.”

One Zito horse, High Fly, looked very good winning the Florida Derby, though there’s been a speculative buzz about whether a horse can perform in the Derby after a layoff of five weeks (it hasn’t been won that way since Needles in 1956).

Then there’s Sun King, one of the top choices in Pool 2 of the Kentucky Derby Future Wager. He won the March 19 Tampa Bay Derby looking like he was out for a morning jog after tearing up the track on February 26 at Gulfstream to win his debut by 5 3/4 lengths.

Also in the running is Noble Causeway, winner of two in a row at Gulfstream before stepping up in class in the Florida Derby and gallantly getting up to place behind High Fly while notching his first triple-digit Beyer figure.

Zito’s longshot, so to speak, is Andromeda’s Hero, a Fusaichi Pegasus colt who’s only been off the board once in his life. He has yet to really turn it on this year, but his races have been marked by steady improvements in position.

As if this surfeit weren’t enough, Zito found out that George Steinbrenner, owner of Kinsman Stable, wanted to move his horse, Bellamy Road, out of the barn of the mad genius Michael Dickinson. The move seemed to do the horse good, to say the least: Bellamy Road won his debut race in a March 12 Gulfstream allowance by 15 3/4 lengths. Then he became an instant Derby favorite by wiping out the competition in the April 9 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct by 17 1/2 lengths, recording an unheard-of 120 Beyer figure in the process.

“It’s a tribute to Nick, that he’s got so many horses going,” Robert LaPenta, the owner of Andromeda’s Hero, told The New York Sun. “He’s a genuine, honest trainer. He doesn’t just go for the quick reward. He knows horses.”

Zito, whose father exercised horses for trainer Max Hirsch, began working the stables on the New York circuit as a teenager, hot-walking for Buddy Jacobson and working as an assistant trainer to LeRoy Jolley and John Campo. In the early ’70s he went out on his own and rose to national prominence in 1990, when his horse Thirty Six Red won the Wood, placed in the Belmont Stakes, and finished third in the 1990 Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Since then, Zito has saddled two Derby winners, Strike the Gold and Go For Gin. He won the Kentucky Oaks with Bird Town. Last year, Birdstone gave him his first Belmont Stakes in 11 tries.

Now, after four decades in racing, the 57-year-old trainer is having the year of his career. But he’s had to walk a careful line, making sure that he praises all of his horses. When asked, after the Wood, if Bellamy Road was his new favorite, he said, “Those five horses are in our stable and they are like our kids. I don’t know any parent who chooses one child over another. I’m just glad this one is in the family.”

The cards are always stacked against the favorite at the Kentucky Derby, of course. The horse everyone likes on Friday is rarely in the winner’s circle on Saturday. But there can be no doubt where the odds lie with regard to the favorite trainer – Nick Zito is all chalk.

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LaPenta, the owner of Andromeda’s Hero, was in a different spot last year, when he sent The Cliff’s Edge to the gate, only to see the Zito-trained horse lose his shoes in the mud.

“I feel extremely fortunate to be at the Derby two years in a row; it’s every owner’s dream,” LaPenta said. “Last year, of course, there was a lot of pressure. What with The Cliff coming into it as the favorite, and the rain, and him losing his shoes, it wasn’t as pleasurable as it should have been. This year, we’re just going to relax and enjoy it.”

LaPenta is known as the “accidental owner” because of the business model he’s developed. He buys yearlings and resells them as 2-year-olds. He sets a reserve and sells if the price is met; if the price is not met, he’s just as happy to race the horse. The $200,000 reserve price on The Cliff’s Edge, for example, was not met largely because a black cat ran across the dirt in front of the horse during the auction, which was enough to dissuade the crowd of suspicious thoroughbred owners.

About Andromeda’s Hero, LaPenta said that the son of Fusaichi Pegasus – on which he set the reserve at $750,000 – has yet to show his stuff.

“You’ll see a lot from this horse. You’ll never get odds like this on him again,” LaPenta said. “He’ll do something in the Belmont, for sure, maybe even in the Preakness.”

Asked how it was to be on the Zito Bteam, LaPenta replied, “It’s great to be with Nick.”

NICK ZITO ‘ S DERBY ENTRIES

2005 Andromeda’s Hero, High Fly, Bellamy Road, Noble Causeway Sun King

2004 The Cliff’s Edge (5th); Birdstone (8th)

2001 AP Valentine (7th)

1999 Stephen Got Even (14th); Adonis (17th)

1998 Halory Hunter (4th)

1997 Jack Flash (7th); Shammy Davis (12th)

1996 Diligence (9th); Louis Quatorze (16th)

1995 Suave Prospect (11th)

1994 Go for Gin (1st)

1991 Strike the Gold (1st)

1990 Thirty Six Red (9th)