Heatseeker will run with an older crowd

Since 1938, when Seabiscuit won, they have called this classic horse race the Hollywood Gold Cup. This year, they could just as well have gone with the AARP Invitational.

Saturday’s $750,000 Grade I feature at Hollywood Park will showcase one of the best thoroughbreds in the country, being chased by the Geritol set. Picture Kobe Bryant going one on one with Dr. J. Or Federer serving to Borg.

Time marches on. Just a bit slower in horse racing.

When aptly named 5-year-old Heatseeker loads in the gate Saturday and glances right and left, he will see several father figures. He’ll also probably smell lots of liniment and have to listen to whinnying about the good old days.

Although the field won’t be set until Wednesday’s draw, it could include the following equine elderly:

* Perfect Drift, age 9, making his 48th start.

* McCann’s Mojave, 8, making his 35th start.

* Big Booster, 7, making his 45th start.

* Student Council, 6, making his 28th start.

They make a big deal out of experience in sports. Just this group would give 30 years of racing and 156 starts.

Of course, much of this could fall apart before Saturday. Things could get messed up at the rest home, or one of them could nap through a training session.

Matter of fact, it was even more of a senior citizens outing until Lava Man pulled out Sunday. The 7-year-old star had won the last three Gold Cups.

All kidding aside, this might be among the better positive stories in some time in horse racing.

After Barbaro went down in the Preakness in 2006, George Washington in the Breeders’ Cup in ’07 and Eight Belles in this year’s Kentucky Derby, the public started to look more closely at the sport and, in many circles, concluded that, among its myriad problems was the current trend of breeding its stars to speed, fragility and a career that ended at age 3 en route immediately to the baby-making barn. Big stars from the Triple Crown circuit were quickly lost to the ticket-buying public.

With this Gold Cup field of ancient mariners, there has been plenty of time for the public to acquire some name recognition. The horse who Lava Man tied with his third straight victory last year, Native Diver, was so revered that he is buried in the paddock at Hollywood Park. Native Diver is the only horse to win the Gold Cup at age 8.

Richard Mandella, a Hall of Fame trainer who will saddle Perfect Drift, sees the positives.

“It’s great when they stay around and race,” he says. “It’s better for the public. It helps them recognize the horses.”

Jerry Hollendorfer, one of only four trainers to have saddled 5,000 winners, sees a different positive, even if his entry, Heatseeker, isn’t one of the geriatrics.

“At least people can see that somebody is taking care of these horses,” he says.

Perfect Drift and Big Booster have been gelded, so they have no breeding value. But Student Council and McCann’s Mojave have not and have acquired a following by racing on.

“In our case,” says Mike Willman, director of publicity at Santa Anita and owner of McCann’s Mojave, “it just made more sense to race him. He doesn’t exactly have a Calumet Farm pedigree.”

He has also won nearly $1.5 million on the track for Willman, who calls the horse “the miracle in my life.”

Trainer Mike Mitchell’s Big Booster was third last year, and Mitchell is happy to take another shot. “Old Booster should give this a good run for the money,” he says.

Willman’s trainer, Steve Specht, says McCann’s Mojave is the best horse he has ever trained and is not totally discouraged by the presence of Heatseeker.

“We beat him once, last fall,” Specht says, “in 6 1/2 furlongs down the hill,” the turf course at Santa Anita.

Mandella has raced many old horses, including The Tin Man, who ran at age 9, and Sandpit, at 8. Mandella jokes that maybe it takes him longer to figure his horses out.

“I’m a slow thinker,” he says.

But he is not one afraid to give an old guy a chance. If Perfect Drift does indeed run Saturday, he will be the first 9-year-old to the starting gate of the Gold Cup since John Henry in 1984. And John Henry, the poster child for successful older horses, finished second that year.

All of this, of course, could end up as nothing more than senior ramblings about seniors.

John Shirreffs, who trains a baby in the field, the 4-year-old colt Tiago, a half brother of Kentucky Derby winner Giacomo, sees the race as a bunch of greyhounds chasing the mechanical rabbit.

“Unless Heatseeker is carrying an anchor,” Sheriffs says, “I don’t see how we are going to catch him.”

Maybe he will trip on somebody’s false teeth on the backstretch.

--

Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. For previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.