Racing at Del Mar : Past Performances Make Present Sense With These Horses

Baseball fans can overdose on the Baseball Encyclopedia, but for racegoers, the fix is past performances, preferably those belonging to a durable horse such as Cutlass Reality, John Henry or Lady’s Secret.

Cutlass Reality’s past performances contain just 60 lines of type, compiled by the Daily Racing Form. But those 60 lines have enough information for a week of rainy days.

Cutlass Reality will make his 61st appearance today in the $100,000 San Diego Handicap at Del Mar. As the past performances indicate, he has been around.

No trainer has been there for his 60 starts. The 6-year-old chestnut has gone through so many handlers, none of them knows precisely where the horse has been.

“Did he ever run for a (claiming) tag?” his current trainer, Craig Lewis, was asked.

All Lewis could say was, “Gee, I don’t know, I haven’t had him that long.”

The answer is no, Cutlass Reality never ran in a claiming race, but he hasn’t always been a high-class stakes horse, either. A colt who ran against the best as a 3-year-old--and never won--Cutlass Reality was reduced to a string of allowance races late in 1985, and he didn’t win many of those, either.

In fact, it took Cutlass Reality 35 starts before he won a stake, and even that victory came in a minor race at Aqueduct. Then it was 22 outings--and almost 19 months--before he won another stake. Now he’s won three straight--the Californian, the Hollywood Gold Cup and the Bel Air Handicap--since mid-June to become, by attrition as well as merit, one of the country’s leading horses.

Cutlass Reality’s odds were 2-5 in the Bel Air, only the seventh time in his life that he went off as the favorite. His past performances tell you it had been 28 races since he was favored, going back to August of 1986 at Saratoga, where he finished next to last at 9-5.

One thing about Cutlass Reality, he might have run slower early in his career, but he hardly ever ran last. Three of Cutlass Reality’s four last-place finishes came in races that could have lifted him out of oblivion sooner--the 1985 Wood Memorial, the Jim Dandy later that year and the Whitney Handicap in 1986.

Forty-one of Cutlass Reality’s races have been in New York, as have 6 of his 11 victories. Before going 4 for 5 this year at Hollywood Park, he won only one race outside of New York, that being at Monmouth Park, N.J., in his third start.

Cutlass Reality has run at 14 tracks, including one that has been renamed, Keystone now called as Philadelphia Park. Twenty-five jockeys, from Constantino Hernandez to Gary Stevens, have ridden him. One of his riders, Don MacBeth, has died, and another, Karl Korte, wasn’t licensed for 15 years because of his involvement in an international racing scandal.

As a 3-year-old, Cutlass Reality ran 16 times and was ridden by 10 jockeys. At one point, he wasn’t ridden by the same jockey twice for nine straight races. He lost all nine.

Of the $1 million or so that Cutlass Reality has earned, 52% has come in the last three races. In 18 of his races, he has earned nothing.

He has been beaten by a horse of the year--Lady’s Secret--and he has defeated a horse of the year-- Ferdinand. He has lost to some exceptional horses and he has been beaten by a Chief (Chief’s Crown), a King (King’s Swan), a Governor (Deputy Governor) and a Prince (Eternal Prince).

There was one handicapper who inexplicably thought Cutlass Reality would be the horse of the day in the 1985 Preakness. “Analyst,” a selector for the Racing Form, picked Cutlass Reality to win, but he went off at 74-1 and ran fifth, 11 lengths behind Tank’s Prospect. That loss came near the start of a 16-race losing streak.

Cutlass Reality will be appearing at his 15th track when he runs at Del Mar today, but he will need five more tracks to top John Henry’s 19. John Henry was ridden by 19 jockeys, 6 fewer than Cutlass Reality, mainly because Chris McCarron, Bill Shoemaker and Laffit Pincay rode John Henry the last 32 races of his career, with McCarron winning 8 of 14, Shoemaker 6 of 11 and Pincay 5 of 7.

Darrel McHargue also had an outstanding record with John Henry, winning 7 of 11 races before a broken collarbone in a spill on another horse at Saratoga permanently cost him the mount.

John Henry’s lifetime past performances--83 races, 39 victories, a record $6.5 million in purses--need Scotch tape, because they have been folded and unfolded so often. They really deserve to be in a time capsule, because during most of his career there was only one million-dollar race a year, not seven in one day and one worth $3 million, and still hasn’t been passed in purses.

John Henry won all but $50,778 of that $6.5 million for Sam Rubin, the New York bicycle importer who bought him as a 3-year-old for $25,000. John Henry was 3 for 17 and on a 10-race losing streak at the time. Racing until he was 9, John Henry won his first three races for Rubin, two at claiming prices of $25,000 and $35,000.

The statistic that amazed Lefty Nickerson, one of his early trainers before Ron McAnally took over, was that John Henry once ran in 45 straight stakes--the last 45 races of his career.

Who was the last horse to beat John Henry? The past performances say that it was Desert Wine, in the Hollywood Gold Cup of 1984.

A modest stakes winner, Cabrini Green, beat John Henry four times, but that was before Rubin bought the undersized gelding and his career took off.

Interco had John Henry’s number twice in 1984, Mehmet beat him twice in 1982 and Perrault finished ahead of him twice in ‘82, but was disqualified for interference in the Santa Anita Handicap.

John Henry ran in 59 stakes, winning 30. He averaged $79,493 per start, which tops the $67,145 that Lady’s Secret had.

On a percentage basis, Lady’s Secret was more of a stakes racer than even John Henry, for 41 of her 45 starts were in stakes. The exceptions were a dead heat for a win at Belmont Park in her first race, two allowance victories at Monmouth Park in 1987 and the last race of her career that summer, in which she bolted on the first turn at Saratoga.

Before those Monmouth races, Lady’s Secret ran in 40 straight stakes. In 1985, the year before she was voted horse of the year, Lady’s Secret won 8 straight stakes, well short of the record of 14 shared by Colin in 1907-08 and Man o’ War in 1919-20.

Of the 10 jockeys who rode Lady’s Secret, only two--Ray Sibille and Kenny Black--failed to win with her. Sibille and Black were third and fifth, respectively, in consecutive races at Santa Anita in October of 1984.

Lady’s Secret was a slow starter in California, winning 3 of her first 11 starts, but then she finished with four straight victories at Santa Anita, including the Breeders’ Cup Distaff in 1986.

Jockeys Jorge Velasquez (8 for 11), Pat Day (7 for 12) and McCarron (4 for 6) were all successful riding Lady’s Secret. The gray daughter of Secretariat was not the favorite in 12 of her races, and it turned out that the bettors were perceptive, because she won only two of those starts.

Six times Lady’s Secret met colts, her only victory coming in the Whitney Handicap at Saratoga in 1986. And who finished last in that Whitney? If you don’t know by now, it’s because you haven’t been paying attention.