Weekend Racing at Hollywood Park : Three Eastern Riding Stars Give Meeting a Heavy New York Accent

Hollywood Park is starting to look like Aqueduct West, or the Hialeah Annex.

There is no snow--Aqueduct’s winter trademark--or flamingos--those stork-like pink birds that hang out at Hialeah--but the jockey colony at the Inglewood track most certainly has a New York flavor.

Jorge Velasquez and Jacinto Vasquez, both former New York riding champions, are in California for a look-see this winter. Velasquez is on a ricochet from New York after an unsuccessful stint in France; Vasquez is trying California instead of Hialeah, the wrinkled dowager now saddled with South Florida’s worst racing dates and lowest purse structure.

The two V’s are here for the winter only if the traffic will bear them. A third New York invader--Angel Cordero--says he is committed to finishing out the Hollywood Park meeting that will end Dec. 24, and to staying for the Santa Anita season, which runs from Dec. 26 through April 20.

Cordero can afford to have permanent plans. With leading riders Chris McCarron and Gary Stevens sidelined until early next year, there is room at the top, and Cordero, having ridden 13 winners through the first 17 days of the meet, has already crashed the jockey standings.

Cordero has won one minor stake at Hollywood and Sunday he’ll try to add a major victory with Allez Milord, a horse McCarron used to ride and one of the favorites running in the $500,000 Hollywood Turf Cup. Cordero also has a chance today aboard Pine Tree Lane in the $100,000 National Sprint Championship.

“Tony’s opened some doors for me out here,” Cordero said. Tony Matos, who used to be Cordero’s agent in New York, has been booking mounts for Laffit Pincay in California for the last six years.

Cordero will be back at Aqueduct Monday to ride some horses for trainer Marjorie Clayton, his live-in companion and mother of their 2-year-old daughter. Then the 27- year-old Clayton and Julie Angelica Cordero will accompany the 45-year-old jockey back to California when Hollywood Park resumes racing Wednesday.

“I miss my daughter,” Cordero said Friday. “It’s been a week and a half since I’ve seen her.”

Clayton, who used to be a jockey, began dating Cordero after his first marriage broke up several years ago. They traveled together to Venezuela, where Clayton was invited to ride in a female jockey competition.

“They offered her a contract after that for her to ride down there,” Cordero said. “That’s when I said that we better get together permanently. I didn’t want to have her staying in Venezuela.”

Cordero won a race on opening day at Hollywood Park, but two days later his bad luck continued in the Breeders’ Cup, and that may cost him his fourth national money championship.

Going into the Breeders’ Cup, Cordero’s purse total this year was $10.5 million, giving him a lead of about $150,000 over Jose Santos. But Cordero had no better than one second in six Breeders’ Cup mounts, and now Pat Day, who won two Breeders’ Cup races, has a lead of about $600,000 over Santos and $700,000 over Cordero.

Cordero is 1 for 25 in Breeders’ Cup races, but that doesn’t seem to bother him. Mainly, he just hopes to avoid serious injuries that have interrupted his career several times.

“I had that real bad spill (a broken leg and a cut liver) last year, and I got hurt the year before that, too,” Cordero said. “I couldn’t get hurt three years in a row, could I?”

In California, his safety record hasn’t been good. In 1978, he broke his back at Hollywood Park. A few years later, he suffered a broken collarbone at Santa Anita.

These accidents leave him undeterred.

“It’s cold in New York, and my horses have left there, anyway,” Cordero said. “And there’s no money in Miami.”

Horse Racing Notes A field of 14 is entered in the 1 1/2-mile Turf Cup. From the rail out, the runners are Rivlia, with Laffit Pincay riding; Political Ambition, Eddie Delahoussaye; World Court, Aaron Gryder; Vilzak, Pat Day; Swink, Bill Shoemaker; Schiller, Darrel McHargue; Forlitano, Pat Valenzuela; Great Communicator, Ray Sibille; Stately Don, Jacinto Vasquez; Anka Germania, Jose Santos; Gallant Archer, Sandy Hawley; Allez Milord, Angel Cordero; Village Star II, Cash Asmussen; and Tasso, Fernando Toro.

Swink and Rivlia will run as an entry. Also coupled for betting, as mutuel field horses, are World Court and Schiller . . . . Valenzuela says that if he had a vote for the Eclipse Award for the year’s best jockey, it would go to Day. . . . Chris McCarron, walking without crutches, is planning on a comeback in mid-January. About three weeks ago, he had the metal plate and screws removed from his broken leg.

Infinidad, who probably bled in her last two disappointing races, has been retired. . . . Ferdinand’s next race will probably be the San Antonio Handicap at Santa Anita Feb. 14. . . . Santos has won 52 stakes, 5 short of the record that Jorge Velasquez set in 1985. Santos won 9 stakes in November.

Trainer John Gosden has a complaint about the Breeders’ Cup. “My owners supplemented Zabaleta at a cost of $120,000,” he said. “Then they got a big bill for the box seats. You’d think that after putting up all that money, it would count for something.” . . . New York trainer LeRoy Jolley’s reintroduction to Southern California is complete. Asked where he was living, Jolley said: “In my car.”