Santa Barbara Handicap : Mountain Bear’s Victory Makes It a Winning Weekend for McCarron

Coming from behind or playing come-and-catch-me, Chris McCarron had the kind of a weekend that any jockey would envy.

On Saturday, McCarron was in Florida, where he rode the late-running Turkoman to a half-length win in record time in the Widener Handicap at Hialeah.

Returning to Santa Anita on Sunday, he took Mountain Bear to an unchallenged lead in the $186,800 Santa Barbara Handicap, then held off favored Estrapade through the stretch as the 5-year-old English-bred mare notched a half-length upset before a crowd of 34,450.

“Things certainly went the way I wanted,” McCarron said of Mountain Bear’s wire-to-wire win. “And Saturday was fun, too.”

Turkoman was in third place, seven lengths behind the leaders, when he rallied at the top of the stretch to give McCarron his first major win of the weekend.

Mountain Bear’s win, worth $119,300 to his owners--five L.A. lawyers and a construction man from Cardiff--was the first big victory in the training career of Darrell Vienna. What made it sweeter was the fact that Mountain Bear beat Estrapade, one of the best grass females in the country last year and a mare that Allen Paulson bought in November for $4.5 million.

Mountain Bear, the third betting interest in the eight-horse field, paid $13.40, $3.60 and $3.40. Estrapade, coupled in the wagering with Flying Girl, paid $2.80 and $2.60, and Royal Regatta, finishing four lengths behind Mountain Bear, returned $4.80. Mountain Bear’s time for the 1 miles on grass was 2:01.

It was the fractional times, however, that decided the Santa Barbara; McCarron and Mountain Bear were allowed to cruise along at :48 1/5, 1:12 4/5 and 1:36 3/5 for the first mile, with nobody pushing them.

As McCarron stood under a television monitor in the jockeys’ room, making sure the rerun was the same as the real thing, Bill Shoemaker shouted to him from the back of the room.

Shoemaker had ridden Estrapade in her first start this year. “Hey, McCarron, you ought to kiss that jock next to you,” Shoemaker said.

Shoemaker was talking about Robbie Davis, the New York rider who had come to town to ride Videogenic, the winner of the Santa Ana Handicap three weeks ago.

So McCarron turned and did kiss Davis.

“What does he mean?” Davis asked.

“He means that nobody went with me (early),” McCarron said.

Back at his locker, Shoemaker picked up the thread of his wisecrack.

“After that first quarter-mile, I said to myself, ‘Oh-oh,’ ” Shoemaker said. “I was surprised that jock (Davis) let Chris slow it down. If the winner had been forced to run just a little faster early, I think we would have won it. As it was, I had to move sooner with my mare than I wanted to.

“I was between the rock and the hard place. I couldn’t take the chance of moving too soon and not having anything left at the finish.”

Although Estrapade hadn’t run in more than four months, Vienna analyzed the race ahead of time and didn’t have any brilliant strategy to impart to McCarron.

“Looking at the charts, I thought of every way we might beat Estrapade and I couldn’t figure it out,” Vienna said. “Then it broke right for us. I was surprised everybody let us alone on the lead. If I wanted to orchestrate the fractions that they ran early in the race, they couldn’t have been any better than I wanted.”

Mountain Bear’s win was her sixth in nine U.S. starts and her third in a stake. She’s six-for-six at Santa Anita.

“I don’t know how to explain that, I think it’s just a matter of circumstance,” Vienna said. “It might have something to do with the track bias at this track, which in grass races favors horses close to the lead.”

Mountain Bear was bought for an undisclosed sum in a two-horse package in mid-1984. The price was probably less than Paulson’s sales tax on Estrapade, since Mountain Bear’s record in England was only one win in eight tries.

Mountain Bear’s win thwarted trainer Charlie Whittingham as he tried to sweep the weekend stakes at Santa Anita for the second straight time.

“It would have been nice to get a race into Estrapade before this race,” Whittingham said. “Because with the rain we had earlier, it was also difficult to train her. But I don’t think that made as much difference today as the slow pace.”

Mountain Bear has won at distances from 6 1/2 furlongs to 1 miles. “The nice thing about her is that she can win either way--she doesn’t have to be in front, she can also win by coming from behind,” McCarron said.

Like Turkoman did Saturday. McCarron’s game works either way.

Horse Racing Notes

Mountain Bear’s owners are Bob Forgnone, Richard Levy, Chuck Marquis, Dean Stern and Joe Sharer of Los Angeles and Jim Franklin of Cardiff. . . . More X-rays will be taken in three days, but it already appears that Symboli Rudolf’s racing career is over. The Japanese star, making his first U.S. start Saturday in the San Luis Rey Stakes, beat only one horse and suffered a serious leg injury in the race. Symboli Rudolf, winner of last year’s Japan Cup and winner of 13-of-15 lifetime starts before the San Luis Rey, will be returned to Tokyo to start a stud career. . . . Foscarini, who finished fifth in the San Luis Rey, was also injured in the race and is in a life-threatening situation. Foscarini fractured a bone in his right hind leg and underwent surgery Sunday. “We’re trying to save him for stud,” said trainer Laurie Anderson. “The next 24 hours are crucial.”. . . Yukio Okabe, the star Japanese jockey who rode Symboli Rudolf, won Sunday’s first race. Jockeys receive only 5% of a horse’s purse money in Japan, compared to 10% here.