Dancing Brave Is Fourth as Manila Wins Thrilla on Turf

A horse with foreign connections was expected to win the $2-million Breeders’ Cup Turf Saturday at Santa Anita, and it did.

But it wasn’t the favorite, Dancing Brave, the winner of eight of his previous nine races, including the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in his last start, and the 1-2 betting choice of the crowd of 69,155.

Instead, it was Manila, who went to the post as the 8-1 third choice and whose connections, as his name indicates, lie across the Pacific, not the Atlantic.

The 3-year-old bay colt, trained by LeRoy Jolley and ridden by Jose Santos, ran off with the richest turf race in the world, covering the mile and a half on a firm course in 2:25 2/5 and earning $900,000 for his owner, Bradley M. Shannon of Lexington, Ky.

Given an excellent hand ride down the stretch by Santos, who had his whip knocked from his grasp, Manila beat Theatrical, ridden by Gary Stevens, by a neck. The second-favorite, Estrapade, with Fernando Toro aboard, was third, 3 3/4 lengths back.

Dancing Brave, who never led, hung on to finish fourth, another 2 3/4 lengths behind Estrapade.

Manila paid his backers $19.60, $3.60 and $5.40. Theatrical, whose second-place finish was worth $450,000, paid $2.60 and $3, while Estrapade earned $216,000 for finishing third and paid $3.

Neither Dancing Brave’s trainer, Guy Harwood, nor his jockey, Pat Eddery, could argue that the favorite, making his last start before being retired to stud, deserved to win.

Instead, they said that Santa Anita’s tight turns and the fact that the race came at the end of a tiring season for the European champion were more likely reasons for his defeat.

“The pace was all right, he just didn’t handle the track,” Eddery said. “He’s been going since March--he’s had a long career. He looked well (beforehand) but you don’t know until you run.

“From the top turn, when they started runing down the back stretch, he was leaning out all the way. He wasn’t happy. He didn’t produce his form.”

Nonetheless, Eddery said, Dancing Brave, whose only other defeat was by half a length to Shahrastani in the Epsom Derby, deserves recognition for his achievements.

“The horse has given everybody a lot of pleasure,” he said. “Now he’s off to stud. If he’d won here today, it would (merely) have been a bonus.”

Harwood, who trains Dancing Brave for Sheik Khaled Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, said the trip from England also might have taken something out of the colt.

“It took him a while to get over the trip,” Harwood said. “The horse did come very well (into his own) in the last couple of days, but it’s been a long season for him. He’s a great horse--we know he’s a great horse. We took a chance in asking him to race once again at the end of a long season. He didn’t disgrace himself. He just didn’t find that little bit of extra kick in the straight (stretch).

“He just found a little problem, too, handling the turns under pressure. I mean, handling the turns when you’re a fresh horse and handling the turns when you’re tired are two different things. Probably a couple of races over here and learning to turn on the tight tracks would make all the difference.

“I don’t think it had anything to do with the short straight. The horse was in a position to deliver his challenge. Pat (Eddery) said he just lost his balance on the turn (for home), and that, I think, contributed much more to his final position.

“But don’t take anything away from Manila. It was a fine performance.”

Santos, smiling broadly in the interview room after suddenly finding himself $90,000 richer, said he’d lost his whip about 70 yards from the finish.

“Gary Stevens (on the Irish-bred Theatrical) hit him a couple of times, and he hit my hand (accidentally) and I lost my stick,” said Santos, who had to bring Manila around from the rail to pass Estrapade and catch Theatrical. “For the last 70 yards I used only my hands, and I said, ‘Come on, champion, come on, champion, we got it.’

They had, and, in winning the Turf, they contributed a trivia question that could easily stump future historians: What was the connection between the fall of the Philippine government and the Breeders’ Cup?

There is one, as Shannon explained.

“I bought the horse off the breeder, Eduarado Cojuangco, who was one of (former Philippine President Ferdinand) Marcos,’ cronies,” Shannon said. “He (Cojuangco) owned San Miguel Brewery. He was the largest industrialist in the Philippines.

“When the government collapsed, they took all of his assets away from him, practically everything he had. The only liquid asset he had that he could sell to get money was these horses (Manila and his dam, Dona Ysidra). And I was the only guy willing to buy them from him.”

The son of Lyphard has amply repaid Shannon. Saturday’s victory was his eighth in 13 starts and raised his career earnings to more than $1.8 million.

“We bet on him,” Shanon said. “He was 24-1 one time on the board. The other horse (Dancing Brave) was 1-9, and I thought we had the best horse all the time.”

Shannon, a Lexington blood-stock agent, actually had a hand in Dancing Brave’s sale as a yearling. He said he was not surprised that his colt had beaten the favorite.

“He ran just about like I thought he would,” Shannon said of Manila. “Everybody was so impressed with (Dancing Brave’s performance in) the Arc. I wasn’t that impressed with the Arc. I mean, we never had any thought of ducking Dancing Brave.”

Nevertheless, Shannon said he was pleased to have had the chance to run against Dancing Brave.

“I appreciate the owners of Dancing Brave bringing the horse of the year, the horse of the century, the greatest horse since Mill Reef over here,” he said. “It’s like a great heavyweight champion letting some underdog have a title shot at him. They did let us have a shot to run against him, and I appreciate the sportsmanship of it.

“I think he is the best horse to come out of Europe for years, but this may be the best horse there’s been in the United States for years, too.”