Chief’s Crown to Make 1985 Debut

Chief’s Crown, last year’s 2-year-old champion, will make his debut as a 3-year-old Saturday at Gulfstream Park but not in the race one might expect.

Chief’s Crown won’t be running in the $300,000 Florida Derby. Instead, he’ll be on the track about 30 minutes before that, facing seven or eight little-known rivals in the seven-furlong, $50,000 Swaps Stakes.

“When we left California,” trainer Roger Laurin said, “the plan was to give Chief’s Crown one race, then run him in the Florida Derby. But when he started coughing early in the year, I lost almost three weeks with him, and that knocked out that plan. I’m just glad that if I had to lose him for three weeks, it was then instead of now. If it happened now, it would be a struggle getting him ready for the Kentucky Derby. And playing catch-up isn’t my style.”

After winning three stakes in New York last year, Chief’s Crown came to California and added victories in the Norfolk Stakes at Santa Anita and the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Hollywood Park. He finished the year with earnings of $920,890, a record for a 2-year-old.

Still, Chief’s Crown hasn’t been held in awe like some 2-year-old champions.

Tank’s Prospect, a longshot, lost to him by only a half-length in the Breeders’ Cup, and Matthew T. Parker, a gelding that trainer Bobby Frankel bought for record executive Jerry Moss for approximately $50,000, ran a good second to Chief’s Crown in the Norfolk.

“All I know is that they keep putting those 1’s next to my horse’s name,” Laurin said. “He continually improved every race he ran last year. And if you’ll notice, it takes something out of horses to run against this colt. Tank’s Prospect, Matthew T. Parker, they ran dynamite seconds to my horse, but then they didn’t come back very well in their next races.”

Although Chief’s Crown never ran a temperature during his coughing spell at Gulfstream, Laurin was worried. Phaquer, a well-bred filly who was stabled in the stall next to Chief’s Crown, caught a virus and died.

Gulfstream, which is having the most successful season in its history, increased the purse for Saturday’s Swaps by $20,000 to encourage other horsemen to run against Chief’s Crown.

“What we do after Saturday depends on the horse, it depends on the weather,” Laurin said. “We’ll look at the Flamingo (at Hialeah on March 30).

“But the only plan we really have is to run in the Kentucky Derby (May 4 at Churchill Downs). That’s No. 1. Whatever we do, it should take us in a direct line to the Derby.”

How much is Interco worth?

More than $5 million, one veteran racing official said at Santa Anita a couple of days ago.

David Sofro said he is going to sell the 5-year-old, whose career has been ended by an inoperable throat condition. Sofro likes to run his horses and has no interest in entering the breeding business.

Interco, one of five European-raced horses that Sofro bought in a package for almost $1 million in 1983, won nine of 11 starts in the United States, including a streak of seven straight stakes wins. After finished second to Desert Wine in the Californian Stakes at Hollywood Park last June, Interco was sidelined because of sore feet and then developed a small growth on his air passage that prevented him from returning to action this year.

The result of the mating of two stakes winners--his sire, Intrepid Hero, won the Hollywood Derby in 1975--Interco won on both dirt and grass. “If there’s anything that will hurt his price,” one horseman said, “it’s that his last race was last June. No matter what you do, people have a tendency to forget in this game.”

Sofro said that he has spent almost $1 million on insurance premiums on Interco during the stretch when the horse didn’t run. Ted West, who trained Interco and picked him out in France for Sofro, figures that at least two of the horse’s races ought to count for something.

“He beat John Henry twice,” West said. “On dirt in the Santa Anita Handicap and on grass in the San Luis Rey. How many horses can beat a horse who’s been Horse of the Year two times?”

John Forsythe went to the Santa Anita paddock last Saturday to look at Forsythe Boy, the 3-year-old colt that owner Fred Hooper named after the actor.

The conversation with Forsythe Boy’s trainer, Ross Fenstermaker, got around to tongues. Not delicatessen tongue, but horse tongues. Forsythe Boy has an active tongue and needs to run with it tied down.

“This colt’s dam (Susan’s Girl, a three-time Eclipse Award winner) had the darndest tongue you ever saw,” Fenstermaker told Forsythe. “When she’d stick it out, it’d reach almost to her left ear. We wondered why she was always trying to reach that ear, but what it really was was that she had a tooth that was bothering her. We had them take out the tooth, and you never saw that tongue again.”

Horse Racing Notes

Although trainer Charlie Whittingham owns part of Greinton and trains him as well as Lord at War and Hail Bold King, the three horses won’t be coupled in the wagering when they run Sunday in the Santa Anita Handicap. The California Horse Racing Board gave Santa Anita permission to list them separately for betting purposes. . . . Jacinto Vasquez, suspended for a year after allegedly offering another jockey a bribe to fix a race, resumed riding Monday at Aqueduct and won with his first two mounts. Vasquez, who still denies the bribe, is now riding at Gulfstream Park. . . . Time for a Change, expected to be one of the handicap stars this year, fractured a cannon bone at Hialeah and probably won’t run again.. . . Thoroughbred racing meant $11 million in revenue to the state of Florida last year, a small amount compared to the $72 million that dog racing brought in. . . . Hall of Fame jockey Eddie Arcaro, who’s doing some commercial work for Hialeah, recently was denied admittance at the track’s stable gate. The dutiful guard recognized neither the name nor Arcaro. . . . A field of nine, headed by Proud Truth, Stephan’s Odyssey and Banner Bob, is likely for Saturday’s Florida Derby.