The Shoe Gets Back on Track : Jockey Wins Feature Aboard Louis Le Grand

It was three days later than he planned, but Bill Shoemaker finally returned to the races.

“I’ve been riding too long to worry about anything,” the 55-year-old Shoemaker said Monday, minutes after he moved Louis Le Grand from the rail to the middle of the track through the stretch for a 3 1/2-length win in the $164,100 San Luis Obispo Handicap.

After undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his left knee for cartilage damage on Feb. 3, Shoemaker was ready to get back into action Saturday, but his only mount, Temperate Sil, was scratched from the San Vicente.

On Sunday, Shoemaker wasted another trip to the track when Seldom Seen Sue was scratched from the La Canada.

Then Monday, in the race before the San Luis Obispo, another Shoemaker mount was scratched.

“I was wondering if I’d ever get to ride one,” Shoemaker said. “But I knew the knee was all right. It feels a hundred thousand percent.”

Temperate Sil and Seldom Seen Sue would have been favored had they run, but Louis Le Grand was the 2-1 second choice Monday, behind Zoffany, who had already earned $1 million and went off the 6-5 choice in a crowd of 38,643.

Zoffany, whose style has been to come from somewhere just off the pace, went to the lead instead, and was holding off Schiller through the stretch until Shoemaker, blocked on the inside, changed directions and blew past everyone.

“The way we won, our horse was 10 lengths the best,” said George Scott, who manages the racing operations for Allen Paulson, owner of Louis Le Grand.

Zoffany, who finished two lengths ahead of Louis Le Grand in winning the San Marcos Handicap on Jan. 25, was a neck better than Schiller for second.

Louis Le Grand, carrying 118 pounds, 7 less than the top-weighted Zoffany, paid $6.20, $2.80 and $2.60. The other mutuels were $2.60 and $2.40 for Zoffany and $4.20 for Schiller, who has earned $177,450 in 1986-87 without winning a race.

Running on a turf course rated good, Louis Le Grand was timed in 2:28 2/5 and earned $96,600. This was the second stakes win for the 5-year-old son of Key to the Kingdom and Louisville since he left France and made his first California start in January of 1986.

After three-quarters of a mile Monday, Louis Le Grand was last in the eight-horse field, eight lengths behind Forlitano and Zoffany, who were battling for the lead.

“I was happy the way he was running then,” Shoemaker said. “By the three-eighths pole, we might have been last, but we weren’t that far back. I wanted to save ground, because the temporary rail was way out, and if you got parked out, you’d practically be in the parking lot.”

Shoemaker swung Louis Le Grand around Rivlia near the eighth pole for the decisive move.

“I wasn’t really stopped, but I had to wait and wait and wait,” Shoemaker said. “I didn’t get into high gear until we got clear. I think the soft ground helped my horse and hurt Zoffany.”

John Gosden, Zoffany’s trainer, said before the race that his horse seemed to prefer the hard grass course at Hollywood Park, “where he could feel his bones rattling.” Zoffany won the Hollywood Turf Cup in 1985 and the Sunset Handicap last year at Hollywood Park.

Explaining why Zoffany was on or near the lead Monday, jockey Eddie Delahoussaye said: “He really got on the bit today. Even if he had been relaxed, I think the outcome would have been the same. He pricked his ears going down the backstretch, and that usually means he’ll have a lot left. But today he just ran even all the way. He didn’t stop at the end, but he didn’t pick it up, either.”

Charlie Whittingham, who saddled three horses in the San Luis Obispo--Rivlia was fourth and Forlitano finished seventh--won the stake for the seventh time. Shoemaker’s career totals, both records, are 965 stakes wins and 232 wins in races worth $100,000 or more.

In the jockeys’ room, Shoemaker showed the three scars--resembling puncture holes--that resulted from the one-hour surgery.

The first couple of days after the operation, he did nothing. Then he rode a bicycle two or three miles with his daughter, Amanda, and walked to build up strength.

By the middle of last week, he was exercising horses and got on seven before he planned to ride Temperate Sil on Saturday. That was Shoemaker’s first false start, followed by two others. Louis Le Grand’s start wasn’t false, it was just slow, and in no way could it have been confused with his finish.

Horse Racing Notes

Leslie Bito, a retired factory worker from Venice, is going to think the racing game is easy. Bito, who said he had never won anything before he received the two-month use of a 3-year-old colt in a Santa Anita giveaway, saw the horse, named Golden Gauntlet, rally to finish in a dead heat for first in the fourth race Monday. Bito’s share of the purse was $6,750. Santa Anita pays all of the horse’s expenses for two months, then Bito can either keep running him or sell him to the track for $15,000. Bito’s racing silks have a pair of dice totaling seven on the back. . . . Skywalker, who hasn’t run since his win in the $3-million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita last November, will use the Arcadia Handicap--a grass race--on Feb. 28 as his prep for the Santa Anita Handicap on March 8. Skywalker ran on grass just before his Breeders’ Cup win.