Weekend Racing at Hollywood Park : McCarron Has an Edge for Eclipse

In 1973, Sandy Hawley won a record 515 races, but the Eclipse Award for the year’s outstanding jockey went to Laffit Pincay.

The next year, Chris McCarron broke Hawley’s record by riding 546 winners, an achievement that has yet to be surpassed. McCarron received an Eclipse as the year’s top apprentice, but the journeyman jockey award again was voted to Pincay.

More years than not, it has been folly trying to predict the winner of this particular Eclipse Award. Since it was first given in 1971, there has been no pattern in the voting.

McCarron won his only journeyman Eclipse by leading the country in purses in 1980, but he also finished first in purses in 1981 and 1984 and didn’t win.

Pat Day was the national leader in races won 3 straight years, 1982 through 1984, but won the Eclipse just once during that period. And last year, Day finished second in both purses and races won, but was voted the Eclipse.

Jose Santos, who has never won an Eclipse, led the nation in purses in both 1986 and 1987. He missed Jorge Velasquez’s record by 1 when he rode 56 stakes winners in 1986, but he was beaten out by Day in the voting both years.

This year, Santos seemed to be sailing along toward that elusive Eclipse. By the end of October, he was the national leader in both purses and stakes wins and ranked fifth in races won.

But now, he has been overtaken by McCarron in purses--both of them having broken the record $13.4 million that Pincay set in 1985--and even though Santos will be riding at Aqueduct in the afternoons and at the nearby New Jersey Meadowlands at night through the rest of the month, the deck is stacked against him.

McCarron has the advantage of competing this month at Hollywood Park, where a $1-million race and 2 worth $500,000 apiece remain on the schedule.

This weekend, for example, McCarron is riding only 1 day at Hollywood Park, having remained in Tokyo after his upset win aboard Pay the Butler in last Sunday’s $2-million Japan Cup. But after riding in an international jockey competition in Tokyo, McCarron will be back at Hollywood Park Sunday, to handle undefeated Fantastic Look in the $500,000 Starlet for 2-year-old fillies.

McCarron is also expected to ride King Glorious, an undefeated 2-year-old colt, in the $1-million Hollywood Futurity on Dec. 18.

Racing Action, a weekly published in New York, recently polled about 60 of its correspondents, and most of them favored either McCarron or, surprisingly, Angel Cordero, who has moved into fifth place nationally by riding horses that have earned $2.6 million in the last month.

McCarron trailed Santos by about $1.6 million before the Breeders’ Cup. Riding Alysheba to victory in the $3-million Classic added $1.35 million to McCarron’s total, and the jockey also picked up $140,000 in other races. Santos finished in the money only once in the Breeders’ Cup, the third aboard Waquoit in the Classic being worth $324,000.

Santos has ridden in about 600 more races than McCarron this year, but Waquoit has been his only major horse.

McCarron’s win in Japan was his fourth in a race worth $1 million or more this year. Alysheba won the $1-million Santa Anita Handicap and the $3-million Breeders’ Cup Classic, and McCarron, with Pincay injured, rode Forty Niner to victory in the $1-million Travers.

In a strange chain of events, it was, in effect, the death of Mike Venezia at Aqueduct on Oct. 13 that led to McCarron’s riding Pay the Butler for the first time last Sunday.

Robbie Davis, the rider of the horse that trampled Venezia, was not responsible, but he collapsed at a memorial service for the dead jockey a couple of days later and then went into deep depression and hasn’t ridden since the tragedy.

Davis, who had ridden Pay the Butler in 4 of his 5 U.S. starts was scheduled to ride him in the Rothmans International at Woodbine near Toronto 3 days after Venezia was killed.

The night before the International, Bobby Frankel, Pay the Butler’s trainer, was assured by Davis’ agent that the jockey was coming from New York. But on race day, Davis wasn’t there and Frankel scrambled to get Larry Attard, a Canadian rider. Pay the Butler ran ninth, and McCarron was hired for the Japan Cup. If he wins the national title, that’s the race that will have made the difference.

Horse Racing Notes

Lea Lucinda, who finished third in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenille Fillies, is one of three Wayne Lukas-trained horses running in Sunday’s Starlet. The others are Some Romance, who was sixth in the Breeders’ Cup, and One of a Klein, who was 11th. Here’s the field, with jockeys, in post-position order: Kool Arrival, Pat Valenzuela; One of a Klein, Angel Cordero; Fantastic Look, Chris McCarron; Lea Lucinda, Laffit Pincay; Approved To Fly, Eddie Delahoussaye; Stocks Up, Alex Solis; Some Romance, Gary Stevens; and Lady Lister, Russell Baze. All will carry 120 pounds.