It’s a home-track bias for most of the Florida Derby contenders at Gulfstream Park

Brian Lynch likened the Florida Derby on Saturday to a game of pool.

“Let’s rack them up and see who’s got the winner,” the Australian-born trainer of Derby contender Classic Causeway said of the 11-horse field for Gulfstream Park’s signature race.

If the $1 million stakes — historically, a top springboard to the Kentucky Derby — really were conducted on a felt slab with pool sticks, Lynch’s horse would be the oddball of the bunch.

Of the 11 horses entered to line up in the 1 1/8-mile fixture, Classic Causeway is the only one that has never raced over the track. For that matter, he and 50-1 long shot King of Truth are the only two members that didn’t win their first career race at the Hallandale Beach oval.

“We’re playing in the boys’ backyard, I guess,” Lynch said, chuckling.

Saturday’s running of the Florida Derby with a 6:38 p.m. posy marks the 71st renewal of the track’s biggest race, one that typically attracts horses from all parts of the country. But never has it felt so local.

“It just shows you the kind of quality here [in South Florida], ever since Gulfstream started racing year-round,” said Saffie Joseph, a South Florida-based trainer who will be saddling one of the top contenders, White Abarrio, in Saturday’s Derby.

Gulfstream took over the summer racing dates from Calder Race Course in 2013, not only inheriting the track’s well-regarded program for 2-year-old horses, but attracting some higher profile stables that had never spent summers in South Florida in the past.

“More quality horses are staying here now,” said Joseph, who is based year-round in South Florida. “The quality of the summer program has improved a lot, and you’re seeing that from White Abarrio and [Florida Derby favorite] Simplification.”

Simplification, a Florida-bred colt trained by local horseman Antonio Sano, is the 5-2 program favorite to win Saturday’s race. White Abarrio is the 3-1 second choice. The two horses have met once previously, the Feb. 5 Holy Bull Stakes at Gulfstream, in which White Abarrio rolled to a 4 1/4 length victory over his chief rival.

But Simplification returned March 5 to easily win the Fountain of Youth Stakes, a race that White Abarrio sat out.

“I’d be very proud for me, my family, my clients and for Gulfstream,” Sano said of winning the Florida Derby with Simplification. “My house is Gulfstream. I’d be happy to win this race in my house.”

Gulfstream is where Simplification won his very first race in October. It’s also where White Abarrio won his first race in September. Even the colt Charge It, the co-third choice at 7-2, “broke his maiden” at Gulfstream in January for leading trainer Todd Pletcher. Pletcher horses have won five of the past eight Florida Derbies.

While Pletcher often brings horses to South Florida in the winter that have won elsewhere, usually in New York or Kentucky, he has had recent success in the Florida Derby with lightly raced horses that started out at Gulfstream and won the Florida Derby off only two starts: Constitution in 2014 and Materiality in 2015. Charge It is the latest Pletcher horse to fit that mold.

Classic Causeway may be the only “outsider” of the bunch, but he brings impressive credentials. He enters the race off performances in four straight “graded” stakes (the highest caliber), and never finished worse than third in any of them. The colt is coming out of a 2 1/2-length win March 12 in the Tampa Bay Derby. Lynch understands the significance of the Florida Derby in the big picture.

“These are the sorts of hard races you need to find out if he’s going to be competitive in, or even win, the Kentucky Derby,” Lynch said.

The Florida Derby has produced 24 horses that have gone on to win the Kentucky Derby, which this year will be run May 7.

If White Abarrio wins the Florida Derby, Joseph said it would be “a dream come true.”

“It would be huge,” Joseph said.

Joseph was born and raised in Barbados and remembers family vacations designed around the Florida Derby. The first one he saw was Big Brown’s Florida Derby win in 2008.

“I mean, the Kentucky Derby is where you want to get to,” Joseph said. “But we’re not looking that far. This race is very important to us. It’s our home race.”