BREEDERS’ CUP : Notes : Ex-Charger Owner Klein Becomes a Winner With a Running Game

Gene Klein isn’t sure how much money he has spent on horses in the 2 1/2 years that he has invested. Millions, certainly.

On Saturday, some of those millions came running back Klein’s way in the second Breeders’ Cup at Aqueduct.

And how. In the Juvenile Fillies Stakes, Klein’s Twilight Ridge won by a length, and the horse she beat, Family Style, is also owned by the Rancho Santa Fe man who used to run the San Diego Chargers.

Twilight Ridge’s win was worth $450,000, and Family Style earned $225,000 for second.

Ninety minutes later, Life’s Magic and Lady’s Secret, two other Klein runners, ran 1-2 in the Distaff Stakes. The owner will share Life’s Magic’s $450,000 purse with Melvin Hatley, his equal partner in the 4-year-old filly, but Lady’s Secret’s $225,000 prize is all Klein’s--less, of course, the commissions to trainer Wayne Lukas and jockey Jorge Velasquez.

So Gene Klein had a $1.125-million day. That’s a mite better than the Super Bowl he was never able to win with the Chargers.

“Football’s the greatest team game,” Klein said, “but when you own a team, you suffer for three or four hours every Sunday. The good thing about racing is that, win or lose, it’s over in a minute and a few seconds, and then there’s always another race.

“But there’s real agony in horse racing, too. When you lose a horse like Saratoga Six or Tank’s Prospect, you agonize over what might have been.”

Saratoga Six, an undefeated 2-year-old colt, was Breeders’ Cup-bound last year at Hollywood Park when he broke down during a workout but, after surgery, was saved for stud duty. After Klein won the Preakness this year with Tank’s Prospect, the colt broke down in the Belmont and was sent to stud.

Life’s Magic, whose 6-length margin was the biggest among the seven Breeders’ Cup winners Saturday, is in fine shape, but she is also headed for the breeding shed after a career marked by eight wins and more than $2.2 million in purses.

“She’ll be bred to a marketable stallion,” Lukas said, “and we’ll probably sell her at the Keeneland breeding-stock sale next fall.”

Two of Saturday’s winning owners--Fred Hooper with Precisionist and John Galbreath with Proud Truth--are 88 years old.

“I hope to be around a long time and win another one of these,” Hooper said.

Precisionist started as a sprinter but swept the Strub series this year at Santa Anita and was regarded as one of the best distance horses in the country.

He ran in the six-furlong Breeders’ Cup Sprint because he had been away from the races for more than four months and trainer Ross Fenstermaker didn’t have time to crank him up for anything longer.

Hooper also bred Precisionist, as he does most of his horses. “I have to do it that way,” Hooper said. “I can’t afford those big-priced stallions like some of these other guys.”

Leaving the track after he won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile with Tasso Saturday, it occurred to trainer Neil Drysdale how he’d been able to win Breeders’ Cup races both years the series has been run. Drysdale’s winner last year was Princess Rooney.

“Hmmm,” Drysdale said, “I’ve been training a public stable for two years and I’ve got two Breeders’ Cup wins. Maybe there’s something to that.”

Tasso, who was ridden by Laffit Pincay in the jockey’s first Breeders’ Cup win, had won the Del Mar Futurity and the Kentucky Breeders’ Futurity at Keeneland earlier this year. The colt has five victories in seven starts and could take the 2-year-old colt championship.

Not nominated to the Breeders’ Cup, Tasso was supplemented at a cost of $120,000 after he won the Keeneland race on Oct. 19.

“He needed only to win that race to take us here, but he had to win it well,” Drysdale said. “Today’s win (by a nose over Storm Cat) was typical of his races. He does just enough to get there.”

John Nerud had the best line of the day after Cozzene won the Breeders’ Cup Mile.

“I bred both the horse and the trainer,” Nerud said.

Nerud’s son, Jan, trains Cozzene, who is being retired and will go to Gainesway Farm in Kentucky.

John Nerud, 73, is a man of many lines and one of the organizers of the Breeders’ Cup format.

“You know, having a race at a mile was my idea,” Nerud said. “I’ve always said that the mile distance is the best for developing good stallions. It might not suit the Europeans and a lot of other people, but I’m a miler man, and that’s why we have one.”

Trainer Clive Brittain said that Pebbles might run again this year, in the Nov. 16 Washington D.C. International at Laurel.

It is conceivable that Pebbles might even be considered for Horse of the Year in the United States, even though Saturday’s race was her first here. Technically, voters are not supposed to consider a horse’s foreign performances, but among the American candidates, there isn’t a horse that doesn’t have a hole in his or her record.

The crowd of 42,568 at Aqueduct was well under the 64,000 that was announced last year at Hollywood Park.

Saturday’s handle, including one race besides the seven Breeders’ Cup races, was $8.1 million, which set an Aqueduct record. Another $14.5 million was bet at Off Track Betting in New York, and other tracks around the country that carried the race handled $13.2 million, led by $3,453,605 at Santa Anita.