Temperate Sil Wins Santa Anita Derby in Masterful Fashion

Rain started falling as Santa Anita was preparing to run the seventh race Friday, and Lew Figone, a garbage man from the San Francisco Bay Area, looked grim.

Temperate Sil, the horse that Figone’s partner, Richard Granzella, and their trainer, Charlie Whittingham, were going to run in Saturday’s $500,000 Santa Anita Derby, had run only twice on off tracks last month, and didn’t finish better than third.

Regarding Temperate Sil as a mudder, the jury was in. “He can’t run in the mud,” Whittingham said. “Some people can skate, and others can’t.”

While Figone frowned over Friday’s rain, Whittingham said he had the situation in hand.

“I started talking to Doc Strub up there,” Whittingham said Saturday, pointing to the heavens. “He got the rain straightened out. Doc’s an old buddy of mine.”

Had Charles Strub, the dentist who founded Santa Anita more than a half-century ago, still been alive, he would have seen that once Whittingham got Temperate Sil to the track Saturday, the pewter-colored colt and Bill Shoemaker also had the situation in hand.

Friday’s rain stopped well in time for the track to be fast, and Temperate Sil romped to a 5 1/2-length victory as Masterful Advocate, the 2-5 favorite and biggest disappointment in the history of the race, beat out Something Lucky, a 47-1 shot, by a nose to struggle home in second place.

Whittingham, nine days away from his 74th birthday, ended his long string of bridesmaid finishes in the stake and with Temperate Sil will be trying to win his second straight Kentucky Derby, at Churchill Downs May 2. Missing from Louisville since 1960, Whittingham won last year’s Derby with Ferdinand, who was also ridden by Shoemaker.

Whittingham, who has never pushed horses into the Kentucky Derby unless he thought they belonged, said that Temperate Sil would have had to run a “creditable” race Saturday in order to qualify for a Louisville trip.

“There’s no sense going there unless you think you can win,” Whittingham said. “There’s 2 million people there that week in a city that was built for 20,000.”

Ferdinand, third in the Santa Anita Derby, was a 17-1 longshot at Churchill Downs. Temperate Sil will be a much shorter price than that, after having disposed of Masterful Advocate, until Saturday the Kentucky Derby future-book favorite.

Masterful Advocate had won three straight stakes this year, including a five-length win in the San Rafael March 7, when Temperate Sil, making his first appearance on an off track, ran like a camel in finishing fifth, almost 17 lengths behind the winner.

Chart the Stars, another starter Saturday, won the San Felipe Handicap two weeks later, with Temperate Sil running a tired third, 3 1/2 lengths behind.

There were suggestions after the San Felipe that Temperate Sil, despite coming from a long-winded sire (Belmont winner Temperence Hill) and being a grandson of Ruken, the 1967 Santa Anita Derby winner, was only a miler. The best race of Temperate Sil’s career had been at that distance in last December’s Hollywood Futurity.

Whittingham, second five times and third once in other Santa Anita derbies, couldn’t resist rebutting that critique Saturday.

“A lot of the press said that this was just a sprinter,” he said. “Well, we know he can sprint a mile and an eighth. In Kentucky, we’ll see if he can sprint a mile and a quarter, too.”

The second choice in the six-horse field, by a crowd of 49,571, Temperate Sil paid $9.40, $3.20 and $3, ran the distance in 1:49--two seconds off the stake record--and earned $278,250. Masterful Advocate paid $2.40 and $2.20, and Something Lucky, finishing 1 3/4 lengths ahead of the pace-setting Lookinforthebigone, returned $3.80.

Temperate Sil supplied Shoemaker with his eighth Santa Anita Derby win, a record he had shared with Laffit Pincay, who rode Masterful Advocate. Shoemaker, who won three other races Saturday, hadn’t won the Derby since he scored with Habitony in 1977.

Neither Pincay nor trainer Joe Manzi could fully explain Masterful Advocate’s clinker.

At no time in the race did Manzi feel that Masterful Advocate was going to rally. The $5,500 yearling was lathering up in the paddock.

“On the first turn,” Manzi said, “he had to jump heels to keep from running into Temperate Sil. Then the pace backed up into our face. Maybe what he had to do on the turn took something out of him. He didn’t finish strong like he usually does.”

Lookinforthebigone, undefeated in two starts at six furlongs, took the lead, and Shoemaker had Temperate Sil close behind, much the way the colt ran in the San Felipe before he faded.

Something Lucky clung to third going down the backstretch, while Masterful Advocate, wide after breaking from the inside post, was running fourth.

At the top of the stretch, Temperate Sil overhauled Lookinforthebigone without any trouble and began to pull away. Something Lucky was trying to hold on for third, and while Masterful Advocate nosed him out at the wire, the favorite was no threat to Temperate Sil.

“I didn’t care where we would be early, I left that up to Bill,” Whittingham said. “He knows more about pace than all the rest of ‘em put together.”

Shoemaker, 55, won his first Santa Anita Derby in 1956, when Pincay was 9, and six years before Pat Valenzuela, Something Lucky’s jockey, was born.

Shoemaker, who works Temperate Sil in the mornings, was aboard for a 1:12 1/5 six-furlong spin last Sunday and thought the colt would be an improved horse Saturday.

“I thought I’d be laying third or fourth,” Shoemaker said, “but Patrick (and Something Lucky) took back and Laffit’s horse (Masterful Advocate) didn’t run the way I thought he would, so I had to lay second.

“My horse ducked in a little from the whip in the stretch and came awful close to the rail. The extra eighth of a mile in Kentucky won’t be any problem if he runs like he did today.”

Temperate Sil was wearing something he didn’t have before his last race, a scar on the forehead. “Scarface” has become his new nickname around the barn.

“He hit himself in the gate that last race,” Whittingham said, “but I don’t think it had anything to do with the way he ran. He just lost a piece of hide. We didn’t have to take any stitches.”

Both Shoemaker and Whittingham remarked about Temperate Sil’s unusual running style.

“He runs with his head down and his butt up,” Whittingham said. “He would have made a hell of a blacksmith.”

He was sort of a blacksmith Saturday, pounding Masterful Advocate into the ground and sending the Whittingham-Shoemaker team on another Kentucky odyssey that may be even more lyrical than last year’s.

Horse Racing Notes

Charlie Whittingham anticipates sending Temperate Sil to Kentucky about two weeks before the Derby. . . . Temperate Sil boosted his earnings to $853,625. . . . The Kentucky Derby is still in the plans for Masterful Advocate, but now trainer Joe Manzi is considering running in the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland nine days before the Derby. . . . Chart the Stars, who ran last Saturday, is staying in California. “He didn’t run a jump,” said Eddie Delahoussaye, who rode Chart the Stars. . . . Alysheba, who missed the Santa Anita Derby because of a fever, is scheduled to run in the Blue Grass. . . . Other California-based horses with Kentucky Derby aspirations--Momentus, Fast Delivery and Candi’s Gold--are scheduled to run in the Lexington Stakes next Saturday at Keeneland. . . . Snow Chief, last year’s Santa Anita Derby winner, will run in the Oaklawn Handicap in Arkansas on April 17. . . . In the Santa Gertrudes Handicap at Santa Anita Saturday, Schiller led all the way for a half-length win, his first since December of 1985. . . . Shoemaker has 8,654 wins, 969 victories in stakes and 235 wins in $100,000 races. . . . The handle of $9.8 million was a record for a Santa Anita Derby day.