Racing at Hollywood Park : Ransomed Captive Scores an Upset

Of the six 3-year-old fillies in Saturday’s $103,500 Princess Stakes at Hollywood Park, Ransomed Captive was the only one who had never won a stakes race. In fact, before the Princess, Ransomed Captive had never even started in a stake.

After Ransomed Captive won the 1 1/16-mile race by a neck, with the favorites, Sacahuista and Very Subtle, being unable to run her down in the stretch, trainer Bill Walters was asked if he really thought his filly had a chance.

“You’re darn right I did,” the 58-year-old Walters said. “I’ve got the tickets right here in my pocket to prove it.”

Ransomed Captive, the fourth choice of a crowd of 26,325, paid $19.80, $6.60 and $3. Sacahuista, the 2-1 second choice, finished a length ahead of 9-10 favorite Very Subtle and paid $4 and $2.80. Very Subtle, who’s now failed to win all four times in races around two turns, paid $2.20.

Walters has felt that Ransomed Captive had stakes potential ever since that morning at Del Mar a year ago. Before she ran her first race, Ransomed Captive worked five-eighths of a mile in a blistering :57 3/5, and by the time she was pulled up, she had gone a mile in about 1:37.

Still, Ransomed Captive never ran with any consistency in the afternoons, usually finding a way to make her races harder than they were. The word that Walters and jockey Eddie Delahoussaye both use for her is “temperamental.”

In particular, Ransomed Captive had problems leaving the gate, and just a week ago, despite beating allowance horses by 10 lengths, she even got spooked near the wire.

In the Princess, Ransomed Captive again broke slowly, but in the short run to the first turn she was still near the front, with Key Bid also trying to set the early pace.

Very Subtle, ridden by Bill Shoemaker, broke from the outside and was close but wide going down the backstretch. Sacahuista, on the rail, also had good position, the closest filly to Ransomed Captive and Key Bid.

On the final turn, Ransomed Captive left Key Bid, extending her lead to about three lengths, and then the question was whether Sacahuista and Very Subtle were in overhauling moods.

Neither filly was up to the challenge. “My horse was hung up wide all the way,” said Mel Stute, who trains Very Subtle. “But if she was as good as I thought she was, she would have won, anyway.”

Timed in a creditable 1:43, Ransomed Captive earned $60,750 for Roger Gebhard, the La Canada movie cameraman who bought the Mr. Leader-Spring in Virginia filly as a yearling for about $30,000. Gebhard is new to racing and owns one other horse with Walters, who was scoring his biggest stakes win since 1978, when he and Ray Priddy won the Cinema Handicap with Kamehameha.

Delahoussaye, winning his fourth stake of the meeting, wasn’t sure that Ransomed Captive would be ready to compete against Saturday’s rivals, coming back only six days after her previous start.

“I had to use her hard today to get the lead,” Delahoussaye said. “She doesn’t run too good if things don’t go her way.

“When I had to rush her and use her so much early, I was afraid we’d not have much left at the end, but we did.”

Walters wanted Delahoussaye to break Ransomed Captive on top, because the filly hasn’t liked dirt hitting her in the face.

Ransomed Captive won her first race in her second start, at Del Mar last August, but then she went four races without winning before that 10-length romp the other day.

Going off at 4-5 on April 30, Ransomed Captive finished fifth and hemorrhaged in the race. She’s now won two out of three since being treated for the bleeding.

Bettors may not know what to do with Ransomed Captive when she runs in the $150,000 Hollywood Oaks on July 12, since Very Subtle and Sacahuista will be expected to run better and there will be the addition of Buryyourbelief, a division leader who missed the Princess because of a cough.

“The Oaks is about a month off, but we’ll try it,” Walters said Saturday. With a filly who has won twice in seven days, he acted like it might be too long for both man and horse to wait.

Horse Racing Notes

Incredibly, Chris McCarron has made it into the top-10 money list nationally, even though he didn’t start riding until mid-March this year because of the broken leg he suffered last October at Santa Anita. In addition to his Kentucky Derby and Preakness wins with Alysheba, McCarron has also won five stakes at Hollywood Park and registered victories in Arkansas and Northern California, as well as at Suffolk Downs. He’ll be back at Hollywood today to ride The Medic in the $100,000 Cinema Handicap. . . . North Sider, who started the year at Santa Anita, winning the Santa Margarita Handicap, won Saturday’s Monmouth Park Breeders’ Cup Stakes in New Jersey. . . . Tommy the Hawk, winless in 18 starts in 1986 and winner in only 1 of 7 tries this year, surprised in Saturday’s seventh race at Hollywood, beating stakes horses Captain Valid and Exclusive Enough. . . . Apprentice Dave Patton won three races, giving him 36 winners for the season.