Racing at Del Mar : Precisionist Wins Again, but It’s Not Easy

In the paddock before Saturday’s $148,900 Del Mar Breeders’ Cup, Fred Hooper showed that at 90 he might have lost a step, but not his sense of humor.

A passer-by, referring to Hooper’s 7-year-old Precisionist, said to the owner: “Well, the old man’s doing all right, isn’t he?”

“Yes, I’m doing fine,” Hooper said, smiling.

“I meant the horse,” the other man said.

“Well, yes, he’s doing all right, too,” Hooper said. “Both of us are good eaters.”

For the third straight race in a comeback that started abysmally this summer, Precisionist ate up the opposition.

Dogged by Good Command and Pat Day all the way around the track, Precisionist and Chris McCarron shook them off at the top of the stretch, then swatted away Lively One from the sixteenth pole home for a 3/4-length win before 19,070 fans.

Lively One finished 2 lengths in front of He’s a Saros in the four-horse field, with Good Command, paying the penalty for his early speed, winding up last, 4 1/2 lengths behind Precisionist.

Precisionist ran the mile in 1:34 3/5, which was 1 2/5 seconds slower than the track record he set here in an allowance race on Aug. 1.

“I never saw Dr. Fager,” said Jack Preston, one of the three brothers who own Good Command, “but this horse has to be one of the greatest milers of all time.”

Although his supporters collected only $2.60 and $2.20--there was no show betting--there was an appreciative crowd encroaching the winner’s circle, where Fred and Wanda Hooper gathered with trainer John Russell and McCarron, who gave the chestnut a friendly slap on the right flank before he was led off the track. Proof of a horse’s popularity is the reception he receives from fans in the winner’s circle, and Precisionist sent the applause meter spinning on Saturday.

“It’s too bad we can’t keep more like him on the track, instead of sending them to stud,” said Jock Jocoy, a Del Mar veterinarian. “Even 4-year-olds haven’t completely matured when they’re sent away. It’s a pleasure to watch a fully matured horse run for a change.”

Of course, running Precisionist into his seventh year wasn’t part of Hooper’s master plan. The son of the late Crozier, who won the 1963 Santa Anita Handicap for Hooper, had difficulty getting mares in foal in 1987 and this year before he was brought back to the races.

In Precisionist’s first two starts this year, he stumbled leaving the gate and dumped McCarron at Hollywood Park and he was sent to Belmont Park for a last-place finish in the Tom Fool, which was run in boiling heat. Back at Del Mar, he won the record-setting mile race by 4 lengths and was a 3 1/2-length winner in the Cabrillo Handicap two weeks ago.

“At the three-sixteenths pole, I thought somebody was going to come and get us,” McCarron said Saturday. “But I hit him pretty good and he took off. He had to work today. Pat’s horse (Good Command, who was making only his second start since suffering a foot injury in last November’s Breeders’ Cup Classic) made him run around the first turn and down the backside, and he had to run through the lane.”

Lively One’s place price was $3. Precisionist earned $85,150 for his 20th win in 41 starts and is at the $3.3-million mark in purses, which moves him ahead of Bet Twice into eighth place and just behind the retired Snow Chief on the list.

Horse Racing Notes

Trainer Darrell Vienna, who’ll try to win the Ramona Handicap for the second straight year with Short Sleeves, is not thrilled with the 121-pound weight assignment the 850-pound mare will carry today in the $200,000 race. “I think she’s 5 pounds away from winning it again,” Vienna said. “She’s a little horse and she’s got the worst of the weights by far. She won one allowance race this year carrying 114 and has won one Grade I (last year’s Ramona) in her life, and that was with 116.” After that allowance win, Short Sleeves made her second 1988 start on Aug. 27 and, under 121 pounds, lost by a half-length to Chapel of Dreams in the Palomar Handicap. Chapel of Dreams picks up one pound, to 118, off her Palomar win.

Trainer Laz Barrera’s first-time starter, the 3-year-old filly Nikishka, was an easy 6 1/2-length winner Saturday at Del Mar, but Barrera didn’t fare as well at Bay Meadows as his Mi Preferido struggled home next to last in the Bedside Promise Fall Sprint Championship. Broadway Pointe won the race by three lengths over No Commitment. . . . Owner Gene Klein recently gave trainer Wayne Lukas a new Mercedes for winning the Kentucky Derby with Winning Colors. . . . Judge Angelucci, who won 10 of 22 starts and earned $1.5 million, has been retired and probably will join another Charlie Whittingham trainee, Temperate Sil, at stud in Japan.

Although Alex Solis is in the midst of a five-day suspension, he still will be able to ride Future Bright in the Ramona and Mountain Ghost Wednesday in the closing-day Del Mar Futurity because of California’s designated-race rule. If 11 horses--including six supplementals at $10,000 apiece--start in the Futurity, the race would be worth $346,300, the richest in track history. One of the supplementals will be Crown Collection, an Alydar colt who has won both of his starts at the meeting. Others whose owners must pay the extra fee are Bruho, Pokarito, Hawkster, Texian and Student Loan. They are expected to be joined by Music Merci, Mountain Ghost, Playmeonemoretime, Three Times Older and Hajin Boy. Sandy Hawley, who has become the leading jockey in Canada since leaving California, will ride Student Loan.