Horse Racing / Bill Christine : Rupperto Is Headed West to Rest Injured Leg

Rupperto, the lightly raced colt from California who was one of two impressive runners in the Flamingo Stakes at Hialeah last Saturday, was scheduled to remain in the East and start in the Louisiana Derby at the Fair Grounds March 15.

Instead, Rupperto is coming back to California. Not to challenge Temperate Sil, Masterful Advocate and the other top 3-year-olds on the West Coast, but for rest and recuperation. Rupperto strained his upper right rear leg in the Flamingo and has been sidelined indefinitely.

“It’s hard to say how serious it is,” trainer John Gosden said. “Those things can be minor, but they can also be very serious. We’ll just have to take a look at him and go from there.”

Only Talinum, the winner of the Flamingo, was more impressive than Rupperto in the race. Rupperto finished fourth, beaten by three lengths, and then galloped out a strong eighth of a mile past the finish line.

Fernando Toro, who had the mount for the first time because Rafael Meza had chosen to stay at Santa Anita, where Santella Mac gave him a fourth-place finish in the Arcadia Handicap, thought Rupperto showed ability and that he would improve.

Rupperto wasn’t nominated to the Triple Crown series because by the first deadline, Jan. 15, he had run only once in his life, finishing seventh at Santa Anita.

Rupperto scored his maiden victory in his second career start at Santa Anita at 62-1 odds and went off at 22-1 in the Flamingo. Off his race in the Flamingo, Rupperto would have been a late nominee for the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont, at a cost of five times the original fee of $600.

Now his owner, Michael Riordan, won’t have to pay the $3,000. He would just as soon have done that, though, if it would have gotten him to the Kentucky Derby.

Despite an experienced management team, relatively little gambling competition and a favorable climate, the hunch is that the Birmingham Turf Club will not grow into a major race track in the South.

Alabama, which already has two dog tracks, also legalized betting on horses and the $84-million Birmingham track opened Tuesday night with 13,000 attending. Bill Shoemaker flew in from California to ride in one of the races.

The Birmingham track is running a 175-date season, mostly at night, and already has scheduled a $350,000 race, the Alabama Derby April 11.

That’s an awfully long season to be sustained by a metropolitan area of fewer than 1 million people.

Birmingham is 350 miles from another horse track, and track officials expect to entice fans from all directions, including Atlanta, a market area of more than 2 million people 150 miles away.

There are two things, however, that figure to lessen support from the Atlanta market: Many Atlantans are the same people who have successfully been able to keep racing out of Georgia, ostensibly for religious reasons; and the one-way drive of more than three hours to Birmingham means either an overnight stay after the races or a return to Atlanta at close to 3 in the morning.

One Alabama dog track is about 240 miles from Birmingham, near Mobile, and the other is 140 miles away. Birmingham track officials also hope to entice fans from those areas, but they should not underestimate the competitive appeal of dog racing. They need only talk to former officials from thoroughbred tracks in Denver and Portland, Ore., which couldn’t survive the competition. In those cities, horse racing went to the dogs because of the greyhounds.

Horse Racing Notes After three of four years in California--at Hollywood Park in 1984 and next Nov. 21, and at Santa Anita last year--the Breeders’ Cup races are headed East in 1988. The Breeders’ Cup group in Kentucky has narrowed the selection process to tracks from New York, Florida and Kentucky. Breeders’ Cup officials are not naming the tracks still in contention. But they are believed to be Aqueduct and the Meadowlands, which is in New Jersey, not far from New York; Churchill Downs and Keeneland in Kentucky, and Gulfstream Park in Florida. The 1985 Breeders’ Cup races were run at Aqueduct. . . . Snow Chief, scheduled to work seven furlongs Wednesday morning in preparation for Sunday’s $1-million Santa Anita Handicap, only went six when his rider, Pat Valenzuela, forgot about the extra eighth of a mile. Snow Chief’s time was a red-hot 1:09 3/5, and then Valenzuela, who will also ride him Sunday, galloped out the Strub Stakes winner the other furlong in a strong 1:23 1/5. . . . . Now that there’s racing in Birmingham, will Saratoga have to rename its Alabama Stakes? Not likely--the Alabama, a major race for 3-year-old fillies, was first run in 1872. . . . Mr. Zippity Do Dah, winner of the Key West Stakes over Bet Twice last Saturday at Hialeah, used to run under the less distinguished name of Zippity Do Dah. Bill Hartack, a racing official in both California and Florida, remembered that there was another horse running under the same name while he was a steward at Tampa Bay Downs, necessitating a change for the Key West winner. By any name, Mr. Zippity Do Dah looks like a sprinter and would not appear to be a viable candidate for the Kentucky Derby.