Racing at Hollywood Park : Pattern Step Steps Down in Class, Wins Hollywood Oaks by 4 Lengths

Last season at Santa Anita, Pattern Step wasn’t good enough to beat Winning Colors, Jeanne Jones and Goodbye Halo, three of the best 3-year-old fillies in the country.

Maybe Pattern Step still isn’t good enough to beat that sort, but against what she faced Sunday in the Hollywood Oaks--four former claiming horses and two others--trainer Charlie Whittingham’s filly was clearly the best.

Running on her own for jockey Chris McCarron, Pattern Step blew by three horses at the top of the stretch and drew off to win the $162,200 Hollywood Oaks by four lengths.

Super Avie was second, and after her there was a long wait until Comedy Court come home third, 16 lengths behind the winner.

For Pattern Step, the Oaks was a third step in a career that’s had definite patterns: She started out by running on dirt, was switched to grass for four races--and two wins--this spring, and now she’s back on the main track.

“She’s good on dirt and she’s good on grass,” said Whittingham, who won the Oaks for the sixth time. “What really determined where I ran her was which race was available, not whether it was grass or dirt.

“Grass is easier on a horse, but if there’s a spot that you think this filly can handle, you just run her, it doesn’t make any difference. Nothing bothers her and she’s improving all the time.”

Charles Rey of Paris, Ky., bought Pattern Step and Ladanum during the recent Santa Anita meeting. Ladanum ran second to another Whittingham filly, Fitzwilliam Place, in the Beverly Hills Handicap June 26.

Earning $94,700, which puts her over the $250,000 mark, Pattern Step covered 1 1/8 miles in 1:48 3/5 and, as the favorite in a crowd of 33,501, paid $4.40, $3.20 and $2.60.

Super Avie, claimed for $40,000 last November, went off at 18-1 and paid $8.60 and $5 and Comedy Court, claimed in May for $50,000 and making only her fourth start, was the longest price in the field at 30-1 and paid $5.60.

Clean Lines and Flying Countess, who finished 1-2 in the Princess Stakes two weeks ago, ran sixth and fourth, respectively, Sunday.

Clean Lines broke fastest, with Flying Countess in closest pursuit and Super Avie not far back in third. Pattern Step was ahead of just one horse after a half-mile, but started to advance going down the backstretch.

On the far turn, Clean Lines started to tire badly, and Flying Countess also had trouble keeping up. Super Avie, Clean Lines’ stablemate, took the lead briefly, but Pattern Step had a solid bead on her from the outside. Once Pattern Step was clear, only the length of her victory was still in doubt.

McCarron didn’t win a stake race at the meeting until it was about six weeks old, and now he’s won two out of the last three, taking the American Handicap with Skip Out Front last week.

“I let this filly settle, kept her clear and then let her go,” McCarron said of Pattern Step. “She fires well on both dirt and grass and handles both surfaces well.”

Pattern Step was making just her second stakes appearance when she ran fourth, beaten by 18 lengths, as Winning Colors, the eventual Kentucky Derby winner, Jeanne Jones and Goodbye Halo finished 1-2-3 in the Santa Anita Oaks March 13.

That was Pattern Step’s last dirt appearance until Sunday; in between, she won a stake at Santa Anita on the grass and finished second to Do So twice at Hollywood Park.

“When this filly matures, she’s going to be better yet,” McCarron said. “She can sure run all day. She gallops out real strong after her races, and she does it all by herself.”

McCarron won the Hollywood Oaks for the third time this decade, having clicked previously with Fran’s Valentine in 1985 and with Past Forgetting in 1981.

Bill Shoemaker, trying to win his ninth Oaks, rode Super Avie and had to settle for his eighth second-place finish in the stake.

“I didn’t move on this filly, I just let her do her own thing and she took me right up to the leaders at the three-eighths pole,” Shoemaker said. “We just got outrun. I thought I was going real good until the winner got by me.”

Comedy Court broke awkwardly and didn’t accept dirt hitting her in the face, Flying Countess once more refused to switch lead feet and Clean Lines’ jockey, Frank Olivares, reasoned that a third start in 17 days was too much for her to handle.

Probably valid excuses all, but Pattern Step, a better horse if only because of the company she’s kept, ran the race that would have beaten them anyway.

Horse Racing Notes

Pattern Step, a daughter of Nureyev, is out of Tipping Time, the filly which won the Hollywood Oaks in 1969 for Rex Ellsworth in the stakes-record time of 1:47 2/5. . . . Trainer Wayne Lukas considered running Wonders Delight in Saturday’s Landaluce Stakes, but she had made only one start, so he entered her in Sunday’s fourth race instead. Wonders Delight won by nine lengths, running six furlongs in 1:09 4/5. “She ran with a full-cup blinker,” Lukas said of the Icecapade filly, which he thought cost Gene Klein $175,000 at auction. “So after she got that early lead, she probably couldn’t even tell she was in a race.”

Like Tejano, Success Express is a Lukas colt who can’t win as a 3-year-old. Winless in seven races since he won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile last November, Success Express was switched to grass for the first time Sunday, lost an early lead and finished third. “I just put him on grass because the race was there,” Lukas said. “Maybe he’s coming back my way again, but he sure needs a win to bolster his confidence.” . . . Gary Stevens, the meet’s leading jockey, won three times, giving him a lead of 20 over Laffit Pincay. . . . Jacque Fulton would like to set the record straight. The trainer of Clean Lines and Super Avie says she is 34. She was listed as 39 in Sunday’s editions of The Times, and another source lists her as 29. . . . Trainer Craig Lewis said he will let the weight assignments decide whether he runs Cutlass Reality in the $150,000 Bel Air Handicap Saturday. . . . Top Corsage, who was off the board in a stake at Fairmount Park Saturday night, is assigned top weight of 120 pounds for Sunday’s $200,000 Vanity Handicap, but isn’t expected to run. Of the top-weighted horses, likely to run are Integra at 119 pounds and Invited Guest at 116.