San Luis Rey Stakes : Rivlia’s Victory Puts Whittingham on Target for San Juan Capistrano

Trainer Charlie Whittingham and grass horses go together like the San Gabriel Mountains and Santa Anita, but a strange pattern had formed through the first three months of the current meeting.

Whittingham was winning stakes races, but none of them were on grass. And, just as unlikely, Whittingham’s six stakes winners were dominated by younger horses. Lively One, Goodbye Halo and Jeanne Jones are all 3-year-olds.

It was as though Whittingham, long known for his strength with older horses on grass, had become a trainer suddenly specializing in young runners on dirt.

“There’s no reason for it,” Whittingham said recently. “It’s just the way horses run for you sometimes.”

But now, with Santa Anita’s premier grass race, the $400,000 San Juan Capistrano Handicap, approaching on April 24, it’s time for Whittingham to shore up his grass forces. Whittingham has won the San Juan the last 5 years, and 13 times overall.

On Sunday, in 95-degree weather, Whittingham scratched a horse named Motley from the $270,900 San Luis Rey Stakes and still had the turf race covered. Rivlia, who finished third in last year’s San Juan, losing by a couple of necks, received a pathfinding ride from Chris McCarron to win by 2 lengths over Great Communicator, with Whittingham’s other starter, Swink, coming in third.

“We’re coming up to the San Juan,” Whittingham noted. “So we’ve got to be ready, because that’s my race.”

Rivlia, a 6-year-old Riverman-Dahlia horse bred and owned by Nelson Bunker Hunt, was sold last week to local interests who plan to make a breeding deal with a Japanese stud farm next year.

For Hunt, Rivlia earned $780,000, winning last year’s Hollywood Invitational and the Burke Handicap at Santa Anita. Since the Burke, however, he turned in four straight dismal performances, including a ninth-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Turf Stakes at Hollywood Park last November.

Two of the horses in the San Luis Rey--Great Communicator and Vilzak, the second choice in the betting--had soundly beaten Rivlia in recent months. But Great Communicator couldn’t protect the lead through the stretch of the 1 1/2-mile race, and Vilzak, after taking a bad step early, broke down on the far turn and was pulled up by Pat Day. Roy Dillon, a Santa Anita veterinarian, said that Vilzak “might have blown” a ligament in his left foreleg, which probably means the end of his racing career.

Earning $158,400 for Narvick International, Rivlia paid $20.40, $9.60 and $5.60, running the distance in 2:27 1/5. Great Communicator paid $6 and $3.80, and Swink, who was beaten by five lengths, paid $6.80. Mohamed Abdu, sent off the 2-1 favorite by a crowd of 38,304, won four straight shorter races, but was being asked to run a half-mile farther than before and faded to fourth after battling Great Communicator for the lead.

Both Whittingham and McCarron, who was winning his fourth major race of the meeting, felt that the firmer turf course contributed to Rivlia’s improvement.

“He’s a funny horse,” McCarron said. “When the course is firm like this, he runs his best races. When it’s cuppy, like last time, he doesn’t go his best. He was struggling for five-eighths of a mile and doesn’t give you that real good kick.”

Rivlia was last in the seven-horse field after a half-mile, trailing the front-running Mohamed Abdu by nine lengths. Toward the end of the run down the backstretch, Rivlia took off, passing horses while saving ground on the rail.

With a quarter-mile to run, the winner was in fourth place, only three lengths back of Great Communicator, who had moved ahead of Mohamed Abdu. At the top of the stretch, McCarron moved Rivlia off the fence and he passed the tiring Mohamed Abdu and nailed Great Communicator with about an eighth of a mile to go.

“My horse didn’t have enough to hold off the winner,” said Ray Sibille, Great Communicator’s jockey. Rivlia and Great Communicator raced at even weights, 126 pounds apiece, which was a nine-pound pickup for Great Communicator after his win in the San Luis Obispo Handicap Feb. 15.

“My horse took a funny step on the first turn,” Day said of Vilzak. “Then he was traveling bad down the backside. I was right where I wanted to be, head and head with the winner and in fourth or fifth place, when I had to pull my horse up.”

Whittingham has had some bad luck lately, but that may be changing since he also won a stake Saturday with Ifrad in the San Francisco Mile at Golden Gate Fields.

“You can’t have good weeks all the time or it will spoil you,” Whittingham said.

McCarron turned 33 Sunday and by the time Santa Anita runs the San Juan, Whittingham will have turned 75, on April 13.

Last week at Santa Anita, they were telling a story, only partly true, about a local funeral home that went out of business.

“They had to,” a trainer said, “because they found out that they’d never be getting three guys--Noble Threewitt, Johnny Longden and Charlie.”

Horse Racing Notes

Charlie Whittingham saddled the winner of the San Luis Rey for the eighth time and fifth time in the last seven years. . . . The last time Whittingham won a local grass stakes was with Forlitano in the Citation Handicap at Hollywood Park on Nov. 29. . . . Trainer Jack Van Berg, who started the ill-fated Vilzak in the San Luis Rey, is on crutches after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery to have bone chips removed. Van Berg underwent surgery on the same knee about eight years ago. . . . Gary Stevens rode his 100th winner of the Santa Anita meeting Sunday and, with 21 days left, has a legitimate chance at the record of 138, set by Laffit Pincay in 1971. . . . Stevens won with Sebrof, who survived a stretch duel with Talinum in a $60,000 allowance race loaded with stakes winners. Nostalgia’s Star, running for the first time in four months, finished third. . . . Very Subtle and Gulch will be challenged by only three other sprinters Wednesday in the $75,000 Potrero Grande Handicap. Gulch carries 123 pounds and Very Subtle has 120, which makes Very Subtle the theoretical high weight because she gets a 5-pound sex allowance.