Racing at Santa Anita : La Brea Stakes Looks Like Perfect Spot for Very Subtle

When Very Subtle came to Mel Stute’s barn at Del Mar in the summer of 1986, the trainer was told that the filly had potential.

Very Subtle, an unraced 2-year-old, had been training at Caliente in Tijuana, which was the same Stute pipeline that produced Snow Chief in 1985. In 1986, Snow Chief earned $1.8 million and was voted the year’s champion 3-year-old colt.

Still, when Stute first saw Very Subtle, he didn’t tab her as an important addition to his string.

“I was suspicious,” Stute said. “You just never know about those horses from Mexico.”

Stute had bought Very Subtle at a 2-year-old sale for $30,000, then resold her to Carl Grinstead and Ben Rochelle, his clients who raced Snow Chief. Grinstead, who died of cancer last March, was a former trainer who liked to bring along his younger horses at Caliente.

Before her first start, at Santa Anita on Oct. 5, Very Subtle had a couple of workouts that pleased Stute. Then she ran six furlongs in a rousing 1:09 4/5, beating other maidens by four lengths.

“That’s when I knew that she could be a good one,” Stute said. “She won that race so easily.”

Very Subtle wound up undefeated in four starts as a 2-year-old, winning the Hollywood Starlet in late November. A month before, Grinstead, who managed the stable, had expressed interest in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Santa Anita, but Stute convinced him that running in a small stake, a couple of days before, would be an easier spot. Very Subtle was a 3 3/4-length winner in the lesser race.

Her Breeders’ Cup day would come--last November at Hollywood Park. Thrown into a field headed by Groovy, winner of all six of his races in 1987, Very Subtle won the Sprint Stakes in a gallop, beating Groovy by four lengths.

Tuesday, when the champions are announced at a New York hotel, Very Subtle may also win an Eclipse Award. She’s a candidate for the sprint title and has a lesser chance to be voted the top 3-year-old filly of 1987.

Today, Very Subtle has a birthday, like all race horses, and as a 4-year-old she’ll run Saturday against only five challengers in Santa Anita’s $75,000 La Brea Stakes.

The La Brea is a seven-furlong, one-turn race that is Very Subtle’s forte. The Hoist the Silver-Never Scheme filly has earned $1.2 million with 10 wins in 16 starts, but she’s 9 for 10 around one turn.

Very Subtle now races just for Rochelle, who already owned half of her and paid $1.2 million--a California auction record--for a full interest at the Grinstead dispersal sale in October.

Asked about his plans for Very Subtle this year, Stute said: “We’ll try to stretch her out again and see what happens. But if she can’t handle a distance, we’ll go back to sprinting.

“The trouble with that is that the rich stakes races are far and few between. There’s a $100,000 race at Turf Paradise, something at Oaklawn Park and two or three in New York later in the year.”

Very Subtle has been running on anti-bleedimg medication since the second race of her career, at Santa Anita in October of 1986. It says something for the ability of the filly that she won that start even though she bled from the lungs in the race.

“She didn’t win as convincingly as we thought she would,” Stute said. “So we had her scoped after the race, and she’s been on Lasix ever since, except for that race in New York, where it isn’t permitted.”

That was the Test Stakes at Saratoga in August. Very Subtle won by 5 lengths, running seven furlongs in a blazing 1:21.

Horse Racing Notes

Jose Santos has apparently won the national riding title--based on total purses--by a narrow margin for the second straight year. Santos won three races Thursday at Aqueduct in New York, including the $70,290 purse that Jane’s Dilemma earned for winning the Display Handicap. Santos’ purses for the day were $105,150, which gave him an unofficial total of $12,374,433. That’s $6,863 more than Pat Day’s total. Day has ridden infrequently since he won two Breeders’ Cup races Nov. 21. Day had a lead of about $547,000 in Daily Racing Form compilations through Dec. 13. In 1986, Santos had $11.3 million in purses and beat out Gary Stevens by $26,000 for the money title. . . . Santos’ stakes win Thursday was his 56th of the year, which left him one short of the record that Jorge Velasquez set in 1985. . . . Opposing Very Subtle in the La Brea are Toulange, Eden Park, Saros Brig, Fold the Flag and Timely Assertion. Very Subtle, with 124 pounds, is spotting the field 2 to 10 pounds. . . . Santa Anita will run the filly division of the $125,000 California Breeders’ Champion Stakes today and Sunday’s feature is the $100,000 San Gabriel Handicap. . . . Chris McCarron, who had surgery on Nov. 23 to remove a steel plate from the leg that he broke in October of 1986, plans to resume riding Jan. 13. . . . Pine Tree Lane, trying to win the Las Flores Handicap for the second straight time, finished second Thursday to Flying Julia, a $79 longshot.