LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A guy rarely walks away at the top of his game.

Two years ago, even as his own career was taking off, Larry Jones introduced himself to fellow trainer Roger Laurin at Saratoga Race Course to ask why he did exactly that two decades earlier.

"At the time, I was like everybody else, thinking, 'This has got to be the craziest guy in the world,"' Jones recalled. "Then he told me, 'You just don't understand the pressure until you're there."'

Now Jones does.

Barely 48 hours remain before what will be his third and last Kentucky Derby, this time with a big bay colt named Friesan Fire, who might also be Jones' best shot to win it. Asked what he's looking forward to most afterward, Jones' grin stretches nearly as wide as the brim on his trademark cowboy hat.

"I just learned this word, so I might be pronouncing it wrong," he said, pausing. "Weekends."

In the back of his mind are offers from friends to spend time at horse and cattle farms in Montana and South Dakota.

"The best thing is that both of them assured me cell phones don't work out there," he said. "I'm trying to get to the point where I can't be reached."

The strange thing is that a year after Jones' filly, Eight Belles, broke down over this same Churchill Downs strip, his business has never been better. Eight Belles went down with two broken ankles after a runner-up finish behind Big Brown and was euthanized on the track. Even as animal-rights advocates tried to make him the poster boy for every problem that plagued horse racing, Jones found more owners than ever willing to fill his barns with prized recruits.

Over the course of a few months, his operation grew from around 40 horses to more than 100. But as the numbers ramped up, he began chafing more and more under the strain that Laurin had warned him about. He had too many owners to satisfy and not enough employees he could trust.

"I still love to ride horses. The time between 6 and 10 in the morning, when I do all my riding and most of my work, is still the best time of every day. I don't mind cleaning stalls, either. Frankly, there's not a job with these horses that I don't like.

"But all the other stuff that goes with it?" he added. "I just don't need that."

Rain falls intermittently during a cool, gray morning on the backstretch. Friesan Fire is resting comfortably in a stall on the other side of the barn and as hotwalkers pass by with the rest of his horses, Jones casts a careful glance at each one. Few trainers still climb on their horses to exercise them and none is more hands-on. Jones, 52, actually got into the thoroughbred racket as an owner in 1980, but quickly added trainer to the job description when he couldn't find even one who met his exacting standards.

His plan now is to retire after the this year's Breeders' Cup and become, simply, an owner-breeder again. But friends and competitors who know how much time Jones spends with every one of his horses have already started a pool on how soon he'll be back.

"I don't believe it," four-time Derby-winning trainer D. Wayne Lukas said. "Nobody leaves the game just when they're getting to where we want to be. I can see him taking time off, but I think he'll be back. He hasn't been at it that long."

Lukas' respect for his rival was never more apparent than the day after last year's Derby. He sat around outside his barn waiting for Jones to show up. Eight Belles' death was the second in a Triple Crown race in as many years. Sadly, Lukas had lost Union City in the 1993 Preakness and knew from experience what was coming next.

"I pulled him into the tackroom and told him, 'You're not going to be ready for the blindsiding, so choose your words carefully. Take the high road,"' he recalled.

"Larry took an unjust beating and barbecue. But in the quiet of his house," Lukas added, "I'm sure it really bothered him."

Jones has boxes of hate mail still sitting back at the house. He was accused of cruelty for running a filly against the colts and he was called a drug cheat, even though the autopsy on Eight Belles came back clean. When Jones announced his retirement plans last September, he conceded the episode "took a toll on my life."

"It's hard to keep letting yourself get so involved and so attached to these things," he said at the time. "Not that I would do anything different, even today, but do I want something like that to happen to me again? No, I don't."

A year ago, Jones tried in vain to hold back tears following Eight Belles' freakish death. The business he never really wanted to get into has taken him places he never expected to see, and exposed him to highs and lows he won't mind leaving behind. But few things would complete the circle more fittingly for a Kentucky farmboy than one final cry with his arms wrapped around the Derby winner's gold cup.