Weekend Racing at Hollywood Park : Frankel Goes for Double With Solva, Sharannpour

For Bobby Frankel, less has become more. Four years ago, the trainer started horses in 622 races and earned $3 million. This year, with only 326 starters, Frankel has already run up more than $3.2 million in purses, and he still has shots to fire.

Two of those are Solva, a 4-year-old English-bred filly who will run Sunday at Hollywood Park in the $200,000 Matriarch Stakes, and Sharannpour, a 5-year-old Irish-bred who’ll run in another race Sunday as a tuneup for the $500,000 Hollywood Turf Cup on Dec. 8.

On paper, Solva is overmatched. On paper, every horse in the Matriarch is overmatched against Estrapade, who is either the best or second-best grass female in the land, depending on your regard for Pebbles, winner of the Breeders’ Cup Turf Stakes in her only American start.

As for Sharannpour, he has won two stakes in New York and one in New Jersey this year. But against top horses--the kind the Turf Cup will draw--he’s been less formidable.

Frankel wouldn’t have it any other way, playing the underdog with relish by running relatively inexpensive horses against equine aristocrats. Frankel seldom tells what he pays for horses on behalf of his clients, but the price for Solva probably amounted to the sales tax on Estrapade, who was sold at auction for $4.5 million a couple of weeks ago.

Solva is one of at least eight horses that have won stakes for Frankel this year and helped put him in sixth place in the Daily Racing Form’s national purse standings. If there is a common denominator to Frankel’s stakes horses, it is that most of them were bred and/or raced in Europe.

If there is anything bittersweet about 1985 for Frankel, it is his role as president of the local horsemen’s group when the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service raided Del Mar in August, taking into custody more than 100 illegal backstretch employees.

Frankel resigned shortly afterward. He says now that the California Horse Racing Board is trying to blame him personally for the racing day Del Mar lost when trainers didn’t enter enough horses.

“The whole thing was one big aggravation,” he said. “As soon as I got out of office, my stable started winning races. When Charlie Whittingham had that job, he went into a big slump, too. He told me it would hurt me on the track, and I thought he was just brainwashing me. But he told me the truth.”

Horse Racing Notes Sunday’s Matriarch field, in post-position order: Possible Mate, Tamarinda, Solva, Zaizafon, Estrapade, Fact Finder, Capricorn Belle, L’Attrayante, Capichi and Field Dancer. Estrapade and L’Attrayante, both owned by Allen Paulson, are coupled in the betting. . . . Twilight Ridge, winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Stakes, will arrive from New York Monday and is a probable starter in the $500,000 Hollywood Starlet on Dec. 1. . . . Probables in the National Sprint Championship a week from today include Precisionist, Temerity Prince, Charging Falls and Committed, the best sprinter in Europe this year.