Vanlandingham Is Now Expected to Join Party : Owner May Fly His Horse From Florida for a Crack at Santa Anita Handicap

Adding to an already sizable field for Sunday’s million-dollar Santa Anita Handicap, Vanlandingham is expected to be flown from Florida to California to join the crowd for the 1-mile race.

Owner John Ed Anthony of Fordyce, Ark., will confer with trainer Shug McGaughey today to determine Vanlandingham’s status. But Tuesday, Anthony indicated that Vanlandingham would probably run in the Big ‘Cap, which in its first year as a million-dollar race may draw more than 12 starters.

Big fields are the rule rather than the exception for the Big ‘Cap, which in 48 runnings has drawn 12 or more horses 31 times. The record number to compete was 23 in 1946, War Knight winning a race worth $146,320, which was as big a deal then as $1 million is now.

Precisionist, winner of the Eclipse Award as 1985’s outstanding sprinter, won the San Pasqual Handicap in his last start, Jan. 25, and he will carry top weight of 126 pounds Sunday, one more than Vanlandingham, who was last year’s male handicap champion. The two 5-year-olds, whose combined earnings are about $3.3 million, have never raced one another.

It will cost Anthony about $40,000 for Vanlandingham’s one-way air trip to California and, although the Big ‘Cap winner will collect $550,000, Anthony is humorously questioning the judgment behind another West Coast invasion by one of his horses.

“Maybe I’m a masochist,” Anthony said. “I took Cox’s Ridge out there and he got beat. I ran Temperence Hill twice in California and he lost. Then, last year, we sent Vanlandingham out there to lose, and my good 2-year-old, Mustin Lake, didn’t do anything in the Hollywood Futurity and had to go back to the farm because the race took so much out of him.”

Vanlandingham is a son of Cox’s Ridge, who after costing Anthony $35,000 at a 1975 yearling auction, became the Arkansas lumberman’s first major winner and went to stud with earnings of $667,000.

Two of Cox’s Ridge’s progeny--Twilight Ridge and Life’s Magic--won $1-million Breeders’ Cup races last November at Aqueduct, but they were for another owner, Gene Klein, and that wasn’t succor enough for Anthony. He was extremely disappointed when Vanlandingham could have won horse-of-the-year honors with a victory, but finished seventh in the $3-million Classic Stakes the same day.

Because Vanlandingham had not been nominated for the Breeders’ Cup, Anthony had to pay $360,000 to make him eligible to run, and he’s prepared to do the same thing this year, when the seven-race series is held Nov. 1 at Santa Anita.

“That’s our long-range plan,” Anthony said. “By running him Sunday, we’ll get an idea if he likes Santa Anita’s race track, which is something we need to know. Putting up that kind of money, I wouldn’t want to be running him cold turkey on the track out there in November.”

In Vanlandingham’s only California start, last December, his early speed didn’t hold up and he finished third in the Hollywood Turf Cup.

That was Vanlandingham’s last start until he won a division of the Canadian Turf Handicap Feb. 15, in a time that tied Gulfstream Park’s track record. Sunday would be the horse’s first start on dirt since his Breeders’ Cup flop. In his first try on grass, just before the Hollywood race, Vanlandingham won the Washington, D.C., International at Laurel.

“Pat Day (replaced as Vanlandingham’s jockey by Don MacBeth after the Breeders’ Cup) used to say that the horse could run on grass if he had to, and I think that’s right,” Anthony said. “But now that we’ve tried him on grass, I don’t feel that the turf moves him up that much over running on dirt.”

Vanlandingham’s trainer--don’t tell anybody, but in real life he is Claude McGaughey III--actually left Anthony’s employ late last year to take a job as stable trainer for the Ogden Phipps family. But part of the deal allowed McGaughey to continue training just Vanlandingham for Anthony. He was just too good a horse to let get away.