Matriarch Invitational : It’s a Sunday Daily Double for Jack Kent Cooke

A chance meeting with Ron McAnally in Texas last month put expatriate jockey Cash Asmussen in the driver’s seat Sunday at Hollywood Park with Jack Kent Cooke’s massive mare Auspiciante, upset winner of the $200,000 Matriarch Invitational.

Auspiciante gave her owner a bi-coastal sports double after Cooke’s Washington Redskins defeated the Dallas Cowboys in the nation’s capital. Auspiciante’s win was worth $110,000; the Redskins’ was worth a share of first place in the National Conference East.

Cooke let McAnally carry the ball at Hollywood while he witnessed the Dallas game. As a matter of fact, Cooke has yet to see his 5-year-old Argentine mare run. He also missed her upset in the Ramona Handicap during the Del Mar meeting last summer.

When Cooke gets the videotape of Sunday’s race, he will see Auspiciante and Asmussen racing in the clear, about eight lengths behind pacesetter Shywing, around the first turn and down the backstretch. Then, when Aberuschka accelerated around the final turn for jockey Pat Valenzuela, Asmussen followed suit.

Auspiciante began her final surge with about three sixteenths of a mile to run. But it was not until Asmussen got her to change leads inside the eighth pole that Auspiciante was able to crack the stubborn Aberuschka. The margin at the wire was a length and one-half.

Nelson Bunker Hunt’s Reloy finished third, a length behind the runner-up. Bonne Ile, the second choice, was fourth after beating many of the same rivals in the Yellow Ribbon Stakes at Santa Anita three weeks earlier. Auspiciante was one of them.

“I thought she was going to win that day,” said Laffit Pincay who brought Auspiciante home sixth in the Yellow Ribbon. “But she lost her action when she came to a soft and slippery spot at the head of the stretch.”

Auspiciante returned $32.80, $17.40 and $10.40 in going the 1 1/8 miles on the turf course in 1:48. Aberuschka, coupled in the betting with Solva, paid $14.00 and $8.80, while Reloy returned $9.20 to show.

Asmussen and McAnally ran into each other while visiting the training facility of Texan George Aubin in early October.

“He was home from France for a while and had come up for the day from his home in Laredo,” McAnally said. “We spent most of the afternoon together. I’ve always liked the way he rides. I thought he’d be perfect for Auspiciante. She a big, strong mare and pulls hard at the jock. Real hard. She should be pulling the starting gate. Cash is strong yet he can help a horse relax without throwing them down. I told him the mare had the speed to be placed anywhere he wanted, and to move when the time was right.”

Despite his solid PR work with McAnally, Asmussen must credit his Matriarch windfall to a jockey juggling act that will trigger an epidemic of second-guessing.

Gary Stevens, who rode Top Corsage to a second-place finish in the Yellow Ribbon, chose to stay with Outstandingly for the Matriarch. Pincay immediately bolted to Top Corsage, leaving Auspiciante wide open, whereupon McAnally offered the mount to Eddie Delahoussaye.

Delahoussaye instead opted to ride Perfect Match II, which turned out to be the worst decision of all. Perfect Match came down with a virus the morning of the Matriarch and stayed in the barn. Delahoussaye stayed home.

Both Pincay and Stevens were shut out as well. Top Corsage finished sixth after pressing the pace, while Outstandingly faded quickly after putting in about a half-mile worth of effort.

Horse Racing Notes

Capote has recovered from an intestinal virus that had the Wayne Lukas barn concerned earlier in the week. “He’s off medication now and doing fine,” Lukas said Sunday morning. “His life was not in danger, but with such a talented horse you are always worried.” Capote won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and is a virtual certainly to be elected the 1986 champion among 2-year-old colts. His sire, Seattle Slew, has already fathered three champions, two of them elected posthumously (Landaluce, trained by Lukas, and Swale). . . . A meeting of the shareholders in the Turkoman syndicate produced no decision on whether to race the Breeders’ Cup Classic runner-up next year.