Skywalker Follows Nose to Kentucky : Santa Anita Derby Is a Hair-Raiser for Mike Whittingham

Skywalker and Fast Account had run like this before, back in late November at Hollywood Park. The result was the same then as it was Saturday, Skywalker winning by a nose, but everything else was different. The last time, they were just a couple of 2-year-olds trying to win their first race. Saturday’s result meant a ticket to the Kentucky Derby.

For Mike Whittingham, who trains Skywalker for the Texas-based Oak Cliff Stable, punch that ticket to Louisville and send man and horse on their way. Whittingham, 39, beat his more illustrious father, Charlie, to a win in the Santa Anita Derby and now has a chance to win the Kentucky Derby ahead of him as well.

A man with little hair, Mike Whittingham would need only a strand to have more than his father, who lost all of his because of malaria during a hitch in the Marines. Mike has reason to wonder about that. It might be races like the 48th Santa Anita Derby that made his old man bald.

Skywalker appeared beaten, you see, at the 16th pole, and it looked as if the Horse With a Million Excuses would finally lose a race without an alibi.

Fast Account, given only a 25-1 chance of winning the $354,500 race by the crowd of 53,773, seemed to zip by the favorite. He got half a length, three-quarters of a length, almost a full length in front.

“When it got to a half-length, I thought we were beat,” Mike Whittingham said. “But that’s when Laffit (Pincay) did such a great job of riding. In a close race, he rides with such confidence. It’s unbelievable the way he can finish on a horse.”

Inside of Fast Account now and along the rail, Pincay was whipping furiously with his left hand. The rest of the nine-horse field wasn’t a factor, and when the two leaders hit the wire, Pincay thought he had won. But Gary Stevens, aboard Fast Account, wasn’t sure of the outcome.

“They had the wire in the wrong place,” said Patty Johnson, Fast Account’s trainer, who was trying to become the first woman to saddle a Santa Anita Derby winner. “The same thing happened in that maiden race last year. My colt got a little bit in front that day and seemed to get lazy.”

Stevens thought Skywalker was holding back at the end of the 1 1/8-mile race, too. “Laffit’s horse loafed,” Stevens said. “I could tell he was loafing. But when I went by him, Laffit’s horse really responded. I was giving my horse a hand ride and went to the whip, but it was too late.

“Both horses were playing the same game. Laffit’s horse was waiting around, and when my horse got the lead, he started waiting around, too. One jump after the wire, we were in front again. My horse just waited at the wrong time.”

Skywalker, earning $219,500 for Oak Cliff, was timed in 1:48 2/5 and paid $4.60, $3.80 and $3. Fast Account’s prices were $14 and $6.80, and Nostaglia’s Star, another longshot who finished 2 1/2 lengths behind the first two, paid $5.

It was Pincay’s seventh win in the Santa Anita Derby, tying a record held by Bill Shoemaker, who didn’t have a mount in Saturday’s race.

“The difference was Pincay,” said John Adger, one of the Houston members of the Oak Cliff syndicate. “He’s so strong and he really fits this horse. He wanted to ride this horse. Pat Day’s a fabulous rider, but today Laffit was the difference. Our horse looked like he was beaten at the sixteenth pole, but Laffit brought him back.”

Day, the leading race-winning jockey in the country the last three years, had ridden the lightly raced Skywalker in his colt’s last four starts, but only one was a win. Skywalker had been having some trouble--a disqualification from third to fourth in one start and then bleeding while losing by only a nose to Image of Greatness in his last race, the San Felipe Handicap at Santa Anita.

“I don’t know about Laffit’s deal with Lukas,” Whittingham said, “but I know he was interested in riding my horse. Laffit’s won some big races for me--he won the Santa Barbara Handicap with Ack’s Secret a few years back--and I think he and his agent (Tony Matos) were impressed by how my horse ran so easily even in defeat.”

Pincay rode Image of Greatness to victory in the San Felipe, and trainer Wayne Lukas thought he had a two-race agreement for Pincay to ride Tank’s Prospect in the Santa Anita Derby. When Lukas learned that Pincay was leaning to Skywalker, he hired Jorge Velasquez to ride Tank’s Prospect.

Tank’s Prospect, winner of the El Camino Real Derby at Bay Meadows in his last start, but a colt without a race in two months, ran last.

Pine Belt and Smarten Up set the early pace with Skywalker not far behind in third. On the turn for home, the leaders faded, with Fast Account taking over Skywalker right behind him.

Of Tank’s Prospect disappointing race, Velasquez said: “He’s just didn’t fire at all. I was already hitting him going down the backstretch, trying to get him to keep up, and I knew we were in trouble.”

It was Skywalker’s third win in six starts (he also has a second place) and his first victory in a stake. He is the result of a mating between Relaunch and Bold Captive, the mare that Oak Cliff bought when she was in foal for $350,000.

Whittingham, who will be running another horse at Keeneland next Saturday, plans to fly Skywalker to the Lexington, Ky., track on Friday. “I’ll move him over to Churchill Downs (70 miles away) right away,” Whittingham said. “He’s easy to train, and I think I can train him into the Derby (on May 4) rather than running him again. I don’t want to take the chance of winding him down to nothing.”

On the way to a champagne celebration in Santa Anita’s directors’ room, Whittingham passed his father, who by his count has finished second in the Santa Anita Derby six times.

“You beat me to it, didn’t ya’,” Charlie Whittingham said, shaking his son’s hand.

“Yeah, it looks like I did,” Mike Whittingham said. Then he told a friend to make sure his father joined the Skywalker group for a celebration at a restaurant Saturday night. Eventually these two trainers need to start talking about hair, and how Mike can keep what little he has left.

Horse Racing Notes

With favorites winning in every Pick Six race Saturday, it paid only $120.80 to 2,656 winners. The consolation price was a measly $17.40. . . . William R. Hawn, who owns Fast Account, would still like to start the colt in the Kentucky Derby, but he might not have enough earnings if Churchill Downs has to invoke the money rule to limit the field to 20 starters. “Skywalker wasn’t running when we went by him,” Hawn said, “but then he came on again. Give the horse credit. He made a gutty comeback. Still, I think my horse would fit in a race like the Derby.” . . . The principal owner of Skywalker is Thomas Tatham of Houston, who between him and his family has 15 of the 40 shares. The horse was named by Casey Tatham, the owner’s 6-year-old son, right after he had seen the movie, “The Return of the Jedi,” which features the character Luke Skywalker. . . . Trainer Wayne Lukas had stakes horses running on four fronts Saturday. Tank’s Prospect ran last at Santa Anita, but Imp Society won the Razorback Handicap at Oaklawn Park, Gene’s Lady took the Fair Mist Handicap at Aqueduct and Pancho Villa finished second to Eternal Prince in the Gotham Stakes at Aqueduct; Lukas’ other horse, Image of Greatness, finished out of the money Saturday night in the Cherry Hill Mile at Garden State Park. . . . Santa Anita-based horses ran 1-2 in the Merry Madeleine Handicap at Golden Gate Fields, with Tamarinda beating L’Attrayante.