Carleton F. Burke Handicap : Nasr El Arab’s Win Not Only Closing-Day Story

Closing day. A gloomy, overcast afternoon at Santa Anita, with a low-lying bank of fog and clouds obscuring the mountains beyond.

The final day of the 20th Oak Tree meeting. A day of last rides for some, first rides for others.

The $200,000 Carleton F. Burke Handicap was billed as the big event, but for at least one horse and one rider, Gary Stevens’ victory aboard Nasr El Arab in the day’s feature passed unnoticed.

To them, the two races preceding the eighth mattered more. Between them, the 6-furlong sixth and the 6 1/2-furlong seventh captured all the sadness and joy, all the tragedy and triumph, that racing can provide.

In the sixth, Russell Baze, who won a pair of races earlier in the day, felt Swinging Easy falter beneath him on the backstretch, and he pulled the gray filly to a halt and jumped off. Scared, the 3-year-old reared, but her right hind leg was shattered and she crumpled to the track. Baze tried to calm her before the veterinarian arrived with the hypodermic needle.

For 10 long minutes the filly lay on the track before she was manhandled into the van and hauled “up the hill,” which is a Santa Anita euphemism for saying she was to be put down.

Not long thereafter, Swinging Easy was humanely destroyed. Her first race was also her last.

By then, however, the attention of the closing-day crowd of 23,194 turned to the seventh race and, more specifically, to the jockey on the No. 7 horse.

Tinem Lian, a 24-year-old exercise rider for trainers Eddie Gregson and Wayne Lukas, was about to ride in her first race, taking on the likes of Fernando Toro, Laffit Pincay and Eddie Delahoussaye.

If Lian, who came to the United States from her home in the Burmese mountain town of Falam when she was 13, was nervous, it did not show. She wore a wide smile as she trotted the Gregson colt, Jade Tree, onto the track.

A few minutes later, her sand-spattered grin was even wider. Not only had she finished the race, she brought Jade Tree home fifth.

“It went a lot faster than I thought it would,” she said while accepting congratulations from Gregson, Lukas and what were now, officially, her fellow jockeys. “I think I could have done better. I don’t know.”

She was still smiling as she walked back to the jockeys’ room.

After such moments, the feature was almost anticlimactic, even though it almost ended in a major upset.

Stevens managed to get Nasr El Arab to the wire a nose in front of Northern Provider, a 48-to-1 shot ridden by Luis Ortega, and Toro finished third aboard Trokhos.

Timed in 2:01 for the 1 miles on a firm turf course, the 3-year-old bay colt by Al Nasr out of Coral Dance by Green Dancer, earned $133,000 for her fourth victory in 9 starts.

“I didn’t think it was that close,” Stevens said. “I started to worry when they took so long (examining the photo).”

Trainer Charlie Whittingham, who won the Burke for the third straight and the 11th time overall, echoed the thought.

“He didn’t win by far,” Whittingham said. “But he got there.”

Horse Racing Notes

The formal hearing that began Monday into the circumstances surrounding the discovery of cocaine in the system of trainer Roger Stein’s Emperor’s Turn will continue today. The horse finished second in a $10,000 claiming race Oct. 23 at Santa Anita, and its failure of the postrace drug test led to all 58 of Stein’s horses being suspended from racing, pending the outcome of the hearing. Steward Pete Pedersen said the hearing might take another day or two.

Delighter, winner of Sunday’s $400,000 Yellow Ribbon Stakes, will not switch immediately from French-based trainer Jonathon Pease’s barn to Charlie Whittingham’s stable. Instead, the filly will remain in the handling of assistant trainer Helen Fernandez, who will point her toward the $200,000 Matriarch on Dec. 11 at Hollywood Park. After that race, Whittingham will take over as the filly’s trainer. . . . Also looking ahead to the Grade I Matriarch are trainer John Gosden, whose Annoconnor was boxed in and finished fourth in the Yellow Ribbon, and New York-based trainer Steve DiMauro, who saddled runner-up Nastique in Sunday’s feature.

The Oak Tree jockey championship was won by Pat Valenzuela, who rode 44 winners, 15 more than runner-up Gary Stevens. Eddie Delahoussaye was third with 20 victories, and Valenzuela’s cousin, 19-year-old Fernando Valenzuela, was fourth and won the apprentice title with 19 victories. . . . The training title went to Peruvian-born Julio Canani, who saddled 11 winners in the meet, none of them in stakes races. . . . Total on- and off-track attendance for the meeting came to 730,925, a 9.8% decrease over last year, when the meeting was 5 days longer. Total average attendance of 27,102 (22,260 on-track) reflected a 7% increase. Total handle was down 5.1% overall, but average handle was up 12.6%.

Former Whittingham assistant Dick Lundy has returned to Southern California from the East Coast to take over as head trainer for Allen Paulson. . . . Laffit Pincay won the second race Monday and is just 2 victories away from 7,000. . . . Hollywood Park’s 34-day fall meeting will open Wednesday, with the first post at 1 p.m. Racing returns to Arcadia Dec. 26 for the 90-day Santa Anita meeting that runs through April 24.