Horse Racing Notes : Burnham (22-0) Is the Mike Tyson of Pacing

New trainer Bill Devine likes to compare humbly-bred Burnham, the hot horse in harness racing, to the current heavyweight boxing champion.

“He’s like Mike Tyson,” Devine says of his 3-year-old pacing colt, who was 22-0 going into a planned start in a Yonkers invitational March 19. “He don’t beat anybody, but he keeps on winning.”

Like Tyson, Burnham has had his share of no-account opponents, gaining about a dozen of his 18 straight juvenile victories on Ohio’s county fair stakes circuit.

That was a major reason his 1987 accomplishments were ignored by harness writers and publicists who elected Camtastic the 2-year-old pacing colt champion. The U.S. Trotting Association says Burnham didn’t receive a single vote.

Another reason the colt lacked respect was his common origins. He’s out of the mare Becky’s Adora, whom breeder and original owner Ed Schuster bought for $375, and sired by Puppeteer for a modest fee of $500.

Still, few standardbreds ever win 18 straight on any kind of circuit, and the 1:55 3-5 Burnham paced late last year at the Red Mile was positive evidence that the streak was no fluke.

Dan Markowitz, Irwin Cohen and Larry Gage took notice and bought Burnham off Schuster in January for about $100,000. The colt won three straight races in February and was voted Harness Horse of the Month and began March by winning the big M’s $101,500 New Faces Final.

Devine says there will be no fairground races for Burnham this year, though he may enter some of the wealthier Ohio sire stakes. Instead, Burnham will be pointed to such prestigious stakes as the Windy City Pace and the Prix D’Ete.

“We’d like to get Cam Fella’s record (28 straight victories in 1983). Bret Hanover (35 straight in 1964 and ‘65) is probably out of reach,” Devine said. “But between the New Faces and the Ohio stakes alone, he’s going to be paid for. Whatever comes in between is gravy.”

Breeders’ Cup Ltd. and sponsor Anheuser-Busch have added a million dollars in purses, 10 races and eight tracks to the three-year-old Breeders’ Cup Budweiser Special Stakes Program.

The 1988 series comprises a total of 56 races with combined purses of about $5 million to be staged at 46 tracks in the United States and Canada. Seven of the original races have been designated as Grade III stakes.

New host tracks include Belmont Park, Beulah Park, Fair Grounds, Hollywood Park, Penn National Turf Club, Rockingham Park, Ruidoso Downs and Santa Anita Park.

Only Breeders’ Cup-nominated horses are eligible for full-purse winnings; non-nominated runners are eligible only for the portions of the purses put up by the host tracks.

Hollywood Park will mark its 50th anniversary this year with a spring-summer meet featuring 35 stakes races worth more than $5 million. Twenty-nine of the races to be run between April 27 and July 25 are graded; 13 of them are Grade I.

The track has raised the minimum purse for its stakes events to $75,000, and the richest race on the schedule is the $500,000 guaranteed Hollywood Gold Cup June 26. Eight other races carry purses of at least $200,000.

Gulfstream Park’s total handle for its just-ended 50-day meet was $118.4 million -- a 3 percent increase over total handle in 1986, last time it had the middle segment of Florida’s three winter race seasons. But total attendance of 634,370 was a 4.03 percent decrease from its attendance in 1986.

Track officials cited Florida’s new lottery and increased competition from other pari-mutuel outlets as the reason for the decline.

Track officials pointed out, however, that its handle and attendance totals were respectively 16.6 and 17.6 percent greater than those recorded by rival Hialeah when it had the middle dates last year.