Horse Racing / Bill Christine : A Point System for Eclipse Awards Gets a Vote, but Has Weak Points

There seems to have been more grousing than usual about the Eclipse Awards voting for 1985. It was that kind of year; with no clear-cut winners, no matter whom the electorate honored, complaints were inevitable.

Trainer Charlie Whittingham isn’t critical of the results; he’s critical of the system. “Most of the people who vote (about 250 turf writers, track racing secretaries and Daily Racing Form staffers) don’t see all the horses,” Whittingham said. “How can you be knowledgeable if you haven’t watched ‘em?”

A racing secretary in New York or Los Angeles is the exception to Whittingham’s contention, but there are more representatives in this group from places like Penn National, where the Spend a Bucks and Vanlandinghams are only occasional images on a television screen.

A lot of turf writers attend the Kentucky Derby and the Breeders’ Cup, but in between there is a large segment that not only skips the races but also reads The Sporting News more than the Racing Form. By osmosis, Racing Form voters are attuned to their sport, but most of them are regionally based and subject to the same biases that inflict the turf writers and the racing secretaries.

Whittingham’s remarks at this time are not sour grapes, for he knew as well as anyone that his best Eclipse candidate, Greinton, didn’t deserve an award because he couldn’t win any big races at the end of the year.

“A point system would be a better way of determining champions,” Whittingham says. “Try the point system that they use to determine who runs in the Breeders’ Cup and see what happens.”

The Breeders’ Cup system awards five points to a horse that wins a major (Grade I) stake, four for a second-place finisher and three for third. The point distribution is 4-3-2 for a Grade II race and 3-2-1 for a Grade III stake.

Based on Breeders’ Cup points, the 1985 divisional winners would have been:

2-year-old colt--Mr. Classic

2-year-old filly--Family Style

3-year-old colt--Creme Fraiche

3-year-old filly--Lady’s Secret

Handicap male--Greinton

Handicap female--Life’s Magic

Turf male--Nassipour

Turf female--Estrapade

Sprinter--Precisionist

There are some real aberrations in this group, the most glaring not being Greinton. Only Family Style, Life’s Magic and Precisionist won Eclipse titles.

An argument could have been made for Lady’s Secret and Estrapade as champions, but the others--Mr. Classic, Creme Fraiche, Greinton and Nassipour--would be laughable titlists.

So if a point system is better than the subjective opinions of the Eclipse voters, refinements are necessary. Your move, Charlie.

Wednesday’s Hutcheson Stakes at Gulfstream Park, like Saturday’s San Vicente at Santa Anita, is just one of numerous minor preps leading up to the Kentucky Derby. Two recent winners of the Hutcheson, however, went on to capture the Derby--Spectacular Bid in 1979 and Swale in ’84.

This year’s Hutcheson was won by Papal Power, who finished a neck in front of Raja’s Revenge, with Mr. Classic five lengths farther back in third.

Timed in 1:23 4/5, which on a dull-fast track was one of the slower recent runnings of the Hutcheson, Papal Power paid $19.20 in winning his first stakes race since he took the Hopeful last August at Saratoga.

Two horses who didn’t run well in the Hutcheson were Admiral’s Image and Scat Dancer. Admiral’s Image, winner of all five starts last year while running in his native Pennsylvania, finished seventh as the favorite. Scat Dancer, after finishing third in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile last November, was seventh in the Hollywood Futurity in December and he ran ninth Wednesday.

In the first year that trainers had to nominate their 3-year-olds for all three Triple Crown races at the same time, there have been 422 horses named.

The fee by the Jan. 15 deadline was $600. A final Triple Crown deadline is March 17, when the cost is $3,000 per horse. No supplementary starters are permitted for the Preakness and Belmont Stakes; the Kentucky Derby has never allowed supplementaries.

Record nomination totals, when horses were named separately for the three races, were 432 for the Derby, 338 for the Preakness and 344 for the Belmont.

Trainer Wayne Lukas, who has never won a Derby, nominated 15 horses, including the fillies Family Style, Twilight Ridge, Arewehavingfunyet and Life at the Top. Eight other fillies were nominated.

Among the 3-year-olds not nominated were the injured Storm Cat, Hilco Scamper, who won the Hollywood Juvenile Championship and Monmouth Park’s Sapling last year, and Lukas’ Louisiana Slew, who was a $2.9-million yearling purchase.

Two colts nominated--Colony in Motion and Pleasant Motion--were killed in the Belmont Park fire four days after the nomination deadline. Both horses were sons of 1981 Derby-Preakness winner Pleasant Colony.

Whittingham nominated three horses, including Ferdinand, winner of the Santa Catalina Stakes last week. Whittingham said that Ferdinand would start one more time before he runs in the Santa Anita Derby April 6.

Dave Johnson won an Eclipse Award for telecasting in 1979, for a racing program from Santa Anita. Elsewhere, Johnson also participated in Eclipse Award-winning programs in 1976, 1980 and 1984. But Santa Anita bumped its former track announcer from the ESPN telecast of last Sunday’s Strub Stakes, and Johnson says he also won’t be permitted to work for ESPN when it covers the Santa Anita Handicap on March 2.

A Santa Anita spokesman declined to give a reason for excluding Johnson, but it might be related to the long-running cold war between the Arcadia track and Hollywood Park. Since Johnson left Santa Anita a couple of seasons ago, he has worked for Hollywood Park’s local nightly telecast.

Regarding the state of affairs between the two tracks, a recent Hollywood Park release pointedly started with, “Contrary to the current trend in California racing . . . “ and went on to say that Hollywood won’t be raising certain admission and parking prices and to quote executive officer Marje Everett as recognizing “that other associations are raising . . . prices.”

Santa Anita raised some prices this season. The latest Hollywood release was not any more well-received at Santa Anita than the one last year that said the Inglewood track wouldn’t be offering Santa Anita’s innovative Pick Nine bet.

“When was the last time a track made an announcement about something it wasn’t going to have?” one Santa Anita official said.

Racing Notes

Laffit Pincay is taking a four-day vacation, through Saturday, to pick up a couple of awards in Florida. He won the Eclipse Award as outstanding jockey for a record fifth time and he’s also being honored by the turf publicists with their annual Big Sport of Turfdom trophy. . . . Dick Duchoissois was at Santa Anita Sunday when his Will Dancer was scratched from the Strub Stakes. On Monday, it was announced that Duchoissois, who was the principal owner before, had bought out his three partners at Arlington Park. Duchoissois said while here that it was necessary for him to become sole owner, “because the others can’t afford the investment it will take to rebuild, which is the hope I have.” Arlington was destroyed by fire last summer. Duchoissois says that the track still plans to hold the Arlington Million this summer. He corrected someone who referred to the race as the Budweiser Million, which it had been called under a sponsorship agreement with the brewery for the last four years. “It’s now the Arlington Million,” Duchoissois said. . . . Videogenic, third in the 1985 Eclipse voting for female turf horses, is expected to run in Sunday’s La Canada Stakes at Santa Anita after winning the Orchid Handicap at Gulfstream Park last Saturday. . . . Ray York, who rode more than 3,000 career winners, is coming out of retirement next year to see if he can win two more races to reach the 1,000 mark at Bay Meadows. York, 52, weighs 112 pounds and lives in Taft.