Hollywood Starlet Stakes : Stocks Up Rewards Her Trainer, Wins by 2 1/4

Ted West believes that good horses make trainers look smart. West’s intelligence hasn’t dipped since the days when he was winning races such as the Santa Anita Handicap with Interco, but it has taken him almost 4 years to produce an encore.

West’s return to brilliance took place Sunday, when Stocks Up became just one more longshot to finish first in the unpredictable 8-year history of the Hollywood Starlet.

Stocks Up, ridden by Alex Solis, a suspended jockey who was allowed to compete because of California’s designated-race rule, wore down three front-runners in the stretch for a 2-1/4 length victory in the $500,000 race before a crowd of 22,552.

Stocks Up, a $30,000 supplementary starter who was coupled in the betting with Kool Arrival, paid $20.40, $7.20 and $3.20. as the favorite didn’t measure up for the seventh time in the eight runnings of the stake. Fantastic Look, who finished second by 1 1/4 lengths over One of a Klein, paid $5.40 and $3. One of a Klein, sent off the 7-5 favorite as part of an entry with Some Romance, paid $2.20.

Some Romance was in contention along the rail for a half-mile but flattened out and finished seventh among the eight 2-year-old fillies. Stocks Up’s time for the mile was 1:35.

The Starlet was largely a rematch of several of the horses who couldn’t beat Open Mind in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Churchill Downs a month ago. Open Mind, who has added another stakes victory in New York since the Breeders’ Cup, appears to have clinched the division championship.

Stocks Up ran ninth in the Breeders’ Cup on a muddy track. West thinks that the Kris S.-Sunshine Starshine filly’s only two dull efforts were caused by tracks she couldn’t handle--at Churchill Downs and Belmont Park, where she was a distant fourth in the Astarita in September.

West stables his horses at Santa Anita, which meant that Sunday’s race was the first time she tried Hollywood Park. The win, worth $292,187 to her owners--Alan Pribble, Charles Johnson, Pete Valenti and John Coelho--was her third in six starts and her first stake victory since she won the Sorrento at Del Mar, in the second race of her career.

West, who turned 52 last week, hadn’t won a major race since Interco and his barn had been suffering from two afflictions--slow horses and not many of those at that. When he had Interco, a typical West shedrow would include 35 horses. Now, he has only 12 in training.

“I wished I had 64,” West said. “I didn’t cut back by design. Those years 1985 and 1986 were bad ones. I went from a good stable to an awful one, but I wasn’t doing anything differently and I was working just as hard. But I was running losers, and if you’re not doing good in this game, people (owners) think you’re not trying or you don’t care.”

West told a story on himself that typifies racing’s vagaries. After the Breeders’ Cup, he advised Stocks Up’s owners to give the filly a rest and have her ready for the season next year at Santa Anita.

But then Stocks Up worked a fast three-eighths of a mile a few days after that. “I had to make a different pitch after that workout,” West said. “The way she worked, she needed to run.”

It was a long time before Stocks Up stuck her face into the in-house television monitors carrying the Starlet. She was sixth after a half-mile and although she moved up on the outside to take fourth at the top of the stretch, it still looked like a three-horse race among One of a Klein, Kool Arrival and Fantastic Look.

“She’s a filly that likes to be in the clear, but I wasn’t happy that she was in the middle of the track,” West said of Stocks Up. “Before the eighth pole, I didn’t think she had much of a chance. But past the eighth pole, it looked like she was going to win for fun.”

Solis was serving the final day of a 5-day stewards’ suspension Sunday, but because the Starlet was one of five major races designated by the stewards before the meeting opened, he was allowed to ride Stocks Up in the one race.

“When I asked her to run, she finished really strong,” Solis said. “Ted told me to try and stay back because she likes to come from behind a little bit. We knew there would probably be a lot of speed in the race, so that’s what I did.”

One of a Klein had beaten Stocks Up by 2 1/2 lengths in the Oak Leaf at Santa Anita on Oct. 10, and West added blinkers for his filly in the next two races.

On Sunday, Angel Cordero, riding One of a Klein for the first time, dropped his whip 70 yards before the wire.

“My filly ran a strong seven-eighths, then she got outrun the rest of the way,” Cordero said. “But she hung in there tough.”

Chris McCarron, who won the Japan Cup with Pay the Butler and then remained in Tokyo for an international jockey competition over the weekend, arrived at Hollywood Park Sunday after a long flight and rode Fantastic Look.

“I knew this filly could run, otherwise I wouldn’t have hustled back to do this,” McCarron said.

Fantastic Look was undefeated in two starts before Sunday, but the Starlet was her first stakes race.

Stocks Up will resume running during the Santa Anita meeting that opens on Dec. 26. If she wins there like Interco did, Ted West will be known as a genius again.

Horse Racing Notes

Telesis, who won a race at Hollywood Park on Nov. 25, has been disqualified because an illegal local anesthetic was found in the horse’s system in a post-race test. No action has yet been taken against Tony Dee, who trains Telesis. . . . Russell Baze won Sunday’s first race, the 2,998th victory of his career, but then he suffered what appears to be a minor knee injury pulling up a horse after the fourth race and took the rest of the day off.

Trainer Wayne Lukas said that Houston, his undefeated 2-year-old colt, and possibly Is It True, the winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, will run in the $1-million Hollywood Futurity on Dec. 18. “Houston only won by a head Saturday, but I liked his race a lot,” Lukas said. “He had only run once before, then got sore shins and was out for almost 2 months. He won so easily in that first start that he probably had to do less than what he would have done in a hard workout. So in effect, you might say that Saturday was really his first race.”

The only favorite who has won the Starlet was the Lukas-trained Althea in 1983. . . . Stocks Up’s 1:35 was the fastest running of the Starlet for the 4 years it has been contested at a mile. . . . Trainer John Sadler said that the combination of the high weight and running on the rail hurt Olympic Prospect’s chances Saturday in the Hollywood Sprint Championship. Olympic Prospect, who finished fourth, spotted his rivals between 7 and 15 pounds. Gallant Sailor, the 61-1 winner, carried 116 pounds, 8 less than Olympic Prospect, who lost by less than a length.