Horse Racing / Bill Christine : Three Wins by Lady’s Secret Will Be Kept a Secret From Award Voters

When the 225 or so Eclipse Awards voters sit down in December to consider the Horse of the Year section of their 1986 ballot, they’ll have a list of Lady’s Secret’s last 12 races in front of them.

The trouble is, the durable Lady’s Secret, who has not been out of training since she was a young 2-year-old in 1984, has run 15 times this year.

What the voters will not see on their information sheets are three early 1986 victories at Santa Anita by Lady’s Secret--in the El Encino and La Canada stakes and in the Santa Margarita Handicap. The La Canada and Santa Margarita are considered major races.

Manila, the only other Horse of the Year candidate, ran 10 times this year, his last an extraordinary win in the Breeders’ Cup Turf at Santa Anita Saturday. Thirty minutes earlier, Lady’s Secret had coasted to victory in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, giving her 10 stakes wins this year, 8 in major races.

All of Manila’s races--six straight turf wins, three of them in major events--will be available to the voters, because the Daily Racing Form, which provides the information, lists all of the candidates’ races as long as they haven’t run more than 12 times.

The Form says that it can’t list more than 12 races for a horse because that’s all its computers are capable of recalling.

In 1983, when Sangue was beaten out by Ambassador of Luck in a close vote for champion older filly or mare, she started 13 times. The voters--unless they remembered a race by Sangue 10 months earlier--were not aware that she had started the year with a win in a division of the Santa Maria Handicap at Santa Anita.

Would that information have affected their vote? No one knows for sure, but the point is: There’s something amiss here.

In any election, the voters deserve to have as much information as possible about the candidates, and the three organizations that run the Eclipse Awards--the Form, the turf writers and most of the major tracks around the country--are remiss if the data are not supplied. If they can’t do it, maybe they should call on the League of Women Voters to help them.

Wayne Lukas, who trains Lady’s Secret, naturally believes that the results of all her races should be available to the voters.

“It stands to reason that the more races she’s won, the better her chances are,” Lukas said. “And some of the voters might not remember those early ones. The Santa Margarita, that was one of the best races she’s run all year.

“Maybe we should consider advertising in the Racing Form so that at least most of the voters will see it and have her complete record.”

Maybe the Lady’s Secret vs. Manila vote is academic. Lady’s Secret seems to be the favorite. But Manila gained support with his upset win on Breeders’ Cup day.

After the Breeders’ Cup, Steve Davidowitz, a knowledgeable Minneapolis turf writer, conducted a straw poll on voters’ Horse of the Year preferences. When another writer said that one of the reasons he was voting for Lady’s Secret was that she had won 10 stakes races, Davidowitz said: “Oh, I didn’t know that.”

The past performances in the Racing Form that Davidowitz saw before the Breeders’ Cup Saturday at Santa Anita included only six of Lady’s Secret 1986 wins. For betting purposes, that’s probably enough history. But for voting purposes, an incomplete record of a horse is not enough.

This is incredible. If someone had bet $2 to win on all the Breeders’ Cup horses that ran the last three years, he would have shown a profit.

The 21 Breeders’ Cup races have had 206 betting possibilities, so the investment would have been $412.

The total $2 win payoffs for the 21 horses have been $457.60--a theoretical profit of $45.60.

Favorites have won only 8 of the 21 races, and in two of the three years there have been some longshots paying boxcar prices, starting with Lashkari at $108.80 in 1984 and including Last Tycoon at $73.80 this year. The total payoffs would have been even higher had Fran’s Valentine not been disqualified for interference in 1984. Fran’s Valentine’s win price would have been $151.60.

Yves Saint-Martin rode both Lashkari and Last Tycoon. Horses ridden by Saint-Martin, the 15-time French riding champion, would never be allowed to go off at such high prices back home. The French over-bet Saint-Martin’s horses much the way American fans used to load up on almost anything Bill Shoemaker rode here.

It is likely that the Nielsen ratings on last Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup will show that more people watched this year than last year, but that this year there was a drop from the audience that saw the inaugural races in 1984. Preliminary ratings on Monday showed this to be the case and the overall national figures are expected today.

“The survival of the Breeders’ Cup is not based on the Nielsen ratings,” said Mike Trager, who heads the television, marketing and promotion arm of the Breeders’ Cup. “We’ve never felt that ratings would determine the future of this event, and neither did NBC.”

NBC has televised the first three Breeders’ Cups and is contracted to carry next year’s races from Hollywood Park, as well as the 1988 and 1989 events from tracks yet to be named.

Trager was asked if there was thought being given to slimming down the four-hour telecast.

“Dissecting this event would be a major mistake,” he said. “It would be like CBS not carrying the women’s as well as the men’s final from Wimbledon.

“There is no panic on the part of the network or the Breeders’ Cup. To have championship implications, the races are going to have to be held at the time they are, and there’s always going to be competition on the other networks. You reach a point where you can’t make the public watch. But we feel that we’ve built a solid foundation.”

Trager saw some bright spots in the overnight ratings for Saturday’s races. The Breeders’ Cup was about a point beneath CBS’s telecast of the Lakers vs. the Rockets, and in New York the races had a higher rating than college football.

Next year, however, when the Breeders’ Cup is at Hollywood Park on Nov. 21, the college football competition will be greater than it was Saturday. UCLA and USC will be playing that day and there will also be games between several other traditional rivals.

Handicapper Jeff Siegel, facetiously explaining how Denver, a city without a thoroughbred track, could have been second in the Breeders’ Cup ratings last year and first this time, said:

“How many total people does Nielsen survey in Denver? Maybe 70 or 80? All you need is 10 betting sickos and you’ve got your high rating. Maybe the 70 or 80 they’re testing are all race-track nuts who haven’t had time to move yet.”

Horse Racing Notes It is likely that John Roche, the owner of Coakley, will be refunded the $20,000 it cost to enter her in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Saturday. Coakley acted up in the paddock and was scratched. Hubert Jones, a Santa Anita steward, said that Coakley had been scratched by a veterinarian and, according to Breeders’ Cup rules, that entitles the owner to a refund. . . . Sam McCracken, a veteran turf writer for the Boston Globe who covered more than 20 Kentucky Derbies, died this week of cancer. He was 59. . . . Jockey Sandy Hawley, who had surgery Tuesday at Huntington Memorial Hospital, is convalescing well, Dr. James T. Helsper said. The operation was the second in about a month for Hawley, who is suffering from a potentially deadly form of skin cancer. Helsper said the malignancy was caught early and that Tuesday’s surgery was performed to give Hawley the best chance for a permanent cure. He said Hawley’s prognosis was excellent. . . . Laffit Pincay has won more $1-million races--five--than anybody else. Pincay has won with Skywalker, Capote and Tasso in the Breeders’ Cup, with Perrault in the Budweiser-Arlington Million and with Spend a Buck in the Jersey Derby. No other jockey has won more than two.