Weekend Racing at Santa Anita : Newest Japanese Import Is Here; This One’s a 1-Horsepower Model

Sushi, movies by Akira Kurosawa, cameras and those thousands of efficient cars have all had their impact on the United States, but Japan has never had a racehorse that could compare with those bred in America.

Even when Japanese horses won the Japan Cup the last two years, beating a few U.S. entries, Yuji Nohira, the Japanese trainer, made no knee-jerk comparisons.

“For Japanese horses to find out how good they are, they must travel abroad and meet the best,” Nohira said.

Nohira is a wise man, a man who remembers riding in two Washington, D.C., Internationals and never finishing better than fifth.

More recently, Nohira remembers that his owner, a wealthy, 63-year-old farmer and lumberman named Tomohiro Wada, sent a horse to Europe last year that could not keep up with the best.

And even though home-grown horses won the last two Japan Cups, they were not facing the best from the U.S.

But now, Nohira and Wada are at Santa Anita, and as they probably don’t say back in Japan, they are giving it their best shot. Today, Wada will send out Symboli Rudolf, a 5-year-old with only two losses in his life and earnings of $3.3 million, to face an international field of six rivals in the $200,000 San Luis Rey Stakes.

By sundown, the two men from the land of the rising sun will know more about what Symboli Rudolf is made of. It is likely that the sleek Japanese runner and the American horses will all be bit players, since the San Luis Rey favorite is Strawberry Road II, the 7-year-old Australian-bred who has won stakes in four countries, including the Arcadia Handicap at Santa Anita earlier this month.

Although Nohira is on hand, he has also been reduced to a bit player, since Symboli Rudolf is now in the hands of Ron McAnally, the California trainer who squeezed a record $6.5 million out of John Henry’s creaking bones before the old gelding, in his 10th year, was retired last summer.

John Henry, after losing 100 pounds while isolated in quarantine, finished 13th while running the worst race of his life in the 1982 Japan Cup, but it wasn’t until last year that McAnally met Wada, a breeder who owns three horse farms and about 150 thoroughbreds.

McAnally, a guest of the Japanese, was introduced to Wada by Yukio Okabe, Japan’s leading jockey, who had ridden a winner for the American trainer at Del Mar during a brief U.S. visit last summer.

The 37-year-old Okabe, having arrived here a week ago after a snowstorm and hurricane warnings had cut short his last day of racing in Tokyo, will ride Symboli Rudolf today.

Okabe, who has ridden more than 1,000 winners in a country where there is racing only twice a week, personally takes the blame for one of Symboli Rudolf’s two defeats.

“The pace was slow in one race,” Okabe said. “It was a jockey’s mistake.”

Symboli Rudolf won all three of his starts as a 2-year-old. At 3, he won six straight, including the Japanese version of the Triple Crown, before running third in the Japan Cup. Last year, after three straight wins, the horse developed a shoulder problem that might have contributed to a tiring second-place finish, but in November he finally won the Japan Cup, by 1 3/4 lengths.

Although the American entries in the ’85 Japan Cup were not Eclipse Award caliber, they did have credentials. Alydar’s Best, who finished fourth, had barely lost to Estrapade, a classy mare, at Santa Anita only two weeks earlier, and Nassipour, a sixth-place finisher, had won the Rothmans International in Canada a month before the Tokyo race.

On Thursday morning, McAnally supervised Symboli Rudolf’s last San Luis Rey workout at Santa Anita, accompanied as usual by an Oriental paparazzi and a retinue of newsmen, an entourage of about 25 who have done everything but climb inside the horse’s feed tub since he arrived in Los Angeles March 13.

“They don’t bother me,” said McAnally, a man accustomed to crowds because of John Henry.

He also wasn’t bothered by the way Symboli Rudolf finished in a half-mile grass workout that was done in :49 by the trainer’s watch.

“He didn’t start moving until he straightened out in the stretch,” McAnally said. “But then he really took off.”

Eduardo Inda, McAnally’s assistant trainer, spent five days in Tokyo with Symboli Rudolf before they made the 12-hour flight together to Los Angeles. Also on the plane were two television cameramen and two newspaper reporters.

“Even with John Henry, I’ve never seen anything like the attention this horse has received,” Inda said. “There must have been about 50 television and newspaper people at the airport, and they followed him right up to the plane before we took off.”

Drawing crowds is not the only thing John Henry and Symboli Rudolf have in common. “I got to know the Japanese horse over there,” Inda said. “Outside his stall, he was like a puppy dog, but inside he was a tough horse. He would kick and bite you if you got in his stall. John Henry was the same way.”

Wada said that he’s already been offered $6 million for Symboli Rudolf, who will stand at stud in either Europe or Japan after his racing days. The horse is supposed to remain at Santa Anita for only six weeks, to run today and in the $400,000 San Juan Capistrano April 20, but efforts are being made with customs authorities to extend his stay.

“To win this race Saturday is not our purpose,” Wada said through an interpreter. “All we ask of the horse is that he run as fast as he did in Japan. My dream was just to run him in a good race like this one. I can’t imagine him winning, but it would be my happiest day if he did.”

Horse Racing Notes Eight horses are entered in Sunday’s $150,000 Santa Barbara Handicap. Estrapade, carrying top weight of 124 pounds, will make her first start of the year. She was scratched from the Santa Ana Handicap when the race was taken off the turf. The Santa Barbara field, in post-position order, consists of Mountain Bear, Truffles, Flying Girl, Royal Regatta, Justicara, Outstandingly, Estrapade and Videogenic, winner of the Santa Ana and second highest weight at 122. Estrapade and Flying Girl will be coupled in the betting. . . . Yuji Nohira’s fifth-place ride in the Washington, D.C., International was in 1967 aboard Speed Symboli, Symboli Rudolf’s grandsire. . . . Yukio Okabe finished fourth on a horse Wednesday at Santa Anita and he has a mount in today’s sixth race. . . . There is another Japanese jockey--a woman--riding in the U.S. Kaoru Tsuchiya has ridden four winners this season at Latonia near Cincinnati. . . . Officials from Garden State Park are flying in to pitch two of their races--the Garden State Stakes April 19 and the $1-million Jersey Derby May 26--to the owners of Snow Chief.