Lively One Runs Out of Excuses, Runs to Victory

There are supposed to be 1,000 ways to lose a horse race, and trainer Charlie Whittingham and jockey Bill Shoemaker seemed to have exhausted them all--except the one where the horse jumps the fence and drowns in the infield lake--in cataloguing the many failures of Lively One.

Early this year, after Lively One won consecutive races at Santa Anita to give him three victories in four starts, Whittingham and Shoemaker began acting as though this colt was going to be their next passport to the Kentucky Derby winner’s circle at Churchill Downs. Lively One was quicker than Ferdinand, who took both men to the promised land in 1986, he was a more willing worker than Ferdinand in the mornings and he was bred to run until sundown.

But then the excuses started piling up. Lively One bled from the lungs in the Santa Felipe Handicap at Santa Anita, he got bumped in the stretch and finished fourth as the 4-5 favorite.

Running with medication for the bleeding in the Santa Anita Derby, Lively One still ran poorly, finishing second to the filly Winning Colors and losing by 7 1/2 lengths.

The disasters continued to mushroom: A 12th-place finish in the Kentucky Derby, this time 9 lengths behind the victorious Winning Colors; a 7th in the Will Rogers Handicap at Hollywood Park, with the horse hitting himself badly in his first start on grass; and a 5th in the Silver Screen Handicap, with the colt wearing blinkers for the first time.

Going into Sunday’s $221,200 Swaps Stakes, Lively One had become the deadly one in the minds of the horseplayers; 31,099 of them on Hollywood Park’s next-to-last day of the season made Stalwars the even-money favorite and sent off the Whittingham-Shoemaker hopeful as the 3-1 second choice.

But this time Lively One had gotten his message across to Shoemaker. The son of Halo and Swinging Lizzie--the only starter in the nine-horse field to have run the Swaps distance of 1 miles before--doesn’t like to run close to the pack and he has an affliction for having dirt kicked in his face.

Down the backstretch, Shoemaker placed Lively One in the second echelon, about seven lengths off the pace, and he also had him well off the rail, where the dirt wouldn’t be flying.

Then when Lively One decided to pick up the leaders, virtually running on his own, he and Shoemaker cruised past horses on the far turn, and he completed his sweeping move at the top of the stretch to win going away by 5 1/2 lengths.

Blade of the Ball, who took the lead from Iz a Saros at the quarter pole, finished second. Iz a Saros was third, 1 lengths better than Stalwars, who followed Lively One down the backstretch, tried to make a move on the inside heading for home and then flattened out.

Lively One was timed in 2:01, the fastest time for a winner of the Swaps since Precisionist’s 1:59 4/5 in 1984. The winner, carrying 120 pounds, 3 less than top-weighted Iz a Saros, earned $131,200 while running in the name of Thomas J. Curnes, the son-in-law of Nelson Bunker Hunt, the financially troubled breeder of the horse.

The payoffs were $8.60, $6 and $7.20 for Lively One, $13.60 and $11.60 for Blade of the Ball and $8.20 for Iz a Saros. There was heavy early money bet to show on Stalwars, who wound up with 58% of the $91,000 in the pool bet on him.

Shoemaker, who won the first running of the Swaps with Agitate in 1974, has won the stake four times. Sunday’s victory, about a month before the jockey’s 57th birthday, was Shoemaker’s 993rd stakes win and his 249th in a race worth $100,000 or more.

“He did what we always thought he had in him,” Shoemaker said of Lively One. “There was always some excuse--the dirt in his face, jumping up and down. But today he put everything together. I rushed him last time and it didn’t work, so I took hold of him today. He’s always had a lot of ability.”

Whittingham compared running Lively One to going fishing.

“You just sit there,” the trainer said. “And if you wait long enough, you’re going to catch something. I never lost confidence in him. I was with him all the time in the mornings to know he had the ability.”

Stalwars finished second in the 1 1/8-mile Silver Screen, 2 1/2 lengths behind Iz a Saros and about 2 lengths in front of Lively One. But that race was the first start for Stalwars in 10 weeks, and he closed so willingly that his handlers felt he had regained the form that he lost through illness just prior to the Kentucky Derby. Trainer Gary Jones saddled Stalwars in a tunnel under the stands, instead of in the amphitheater paddock.

“He was pulling hard in the post parade,” jockey Chris McCarron said of Stalwars. “And when we walked in the gate, he settled down real nice. When we started getting up towards the gate, he started bouncing and dancing. He had a real good look in his eye, and I thought he warmed up beautifully.

“Maybe he runs better when he warms up quiet. He wasn’t nervous by any means, just fighting ready.”

With a victory, Stalwars probably would have earned a trip to the $1 million Travers at Saratoga next month. By rights, Lively One ought to be making that trip, but Whittingham doesn’t seem to be tempted and said he will keep the colt at Del Mar. The last time Lively One left California, he ran poorly, and this way it won’t be necessary to duplicate that excuse.

Horse Racing Notes

Charlie Whittingham and Bill Shoemaker also won the Swaps last year, with Temperate Sil. . . . Today, as Hollywood Park ends its season, Whittingham will try to win the Sunset Handicap for the 11th time, with either Rivlia or the filly Ladanum. Rivlia was third in the stake last year. . . . Political Ambition, who won the Hollywood Invitational on May 30, runs in the Sunset in the name of the Clover Racing Stable and Tadahiro Hotehoma, a Japanese man who recently paid in excess of $750,000 for a 50% interest in the 4-year-old colt. Political Ambition will continue to be trained by Neil Drysdale, being pointed for the Japan Cup at the end of the year. . . . Cutlass Reality is being groomed for the $500,000 Budweiser Gold Cup at Hawthorne on Aug. 27, with a prep race at Del Mar or Canterbury Downs likely. . . . Lost Code, winner of the recent Michigan Mile, will undergo surgery today to remove a bone chip from his left knee and will be sidelined for at least four months, trainer Bill Donovan said. “It’s not serious at all,” Donovan said from his room at Jersey Shore Medical Center in Neptune, N.J. where he was undergoing tests for pneumonia.