Horse Racing / Bill Christine : Board Members Leery of Perks

Some members of the California Horse Racing Board paid their own way into the $250-a-plate Eclipse Awards dinner at the Century Plaza Hotel Friday night, even though Santa Anita and Del Mar had offered to pick up the tab.

The seven commissioners are understandably uneasy about accepting favors these days, since two board members--chairman Leslie Liscom and former chairman Ray Seeley--have been accused of conflicts of interest by a harness group that is suing the board in a dispute over additional racing dates.

Liscom works for an insurance brokerage firm that does $1-million worth of business a year with Hollywood Park. Seeley, for several years, has been parking his motor home rent-free on property at Los Alamitos Race Course. Liscom and Seeley both say that they have no conflicts.

According to state regulations, if a racing commissioner accepts anything in value worth $250 or more from a track during a 12-month period, the board member should not be voting on any issues that might result in economic gain for that track.

A free ticket to the Eclipse dinner would not have exceeded that $250 limit. Since Santa Anita and Del Mar are splitting the invitation, commissioners would have been receiving gifts of only $125 from each track, had they accepted.

But these days, racing commissioners are taking extra steps to be simon-pure.

“We wind up spending money out of our own pockets,” said Commissioner Paul Deats of Santa Ynez.

“I figure that it costs me about $2,000 a year to serve. We get paid $100 a meeting, but if you drive to the meetings, you’re only allowed 26 cents a mile and my car costs me almost 4 times that. Then if you have to stay overnight, the per diem is $65--for hotel and meals. You’d be hard-pressed to even find a hotel room for $65 these days.”

Of the nine horses that won Eclipse Awards for 1988, five have been retired--Alysheba, Personal Ensign, Risen Star, Miesque and Gulch.

Three of the four returnees--Easy Goer, Winning Colors and Sunshine Forever--haven’t run yet this year. Open Mind, last year’s champion 2-year-old filly, made her 1989 debut Wednesday at Florida’s Gulfstream Park and won the Forward Gal Stakes by 2 lengths.

Open Mind was the top-weighted filly and Easy Goer heads the list of colts on the Experimental Handicap, which is a theoretical ranking of last year’s 2-year-olds. The Experimental doesn’t attempt to project what horses will do, but rates them solely on their performances as 2-year-olds.

This year’s edition is the opinion of three racing secretaries--Bruce Lombardi of New York, Howard Battle of Keeneland and Arlington Park, and Tommy Trotter of Gulfstream Park.

The panel gave Easy Goer 126 pounds. After him came King Glorious at 125, Fast Play and Is It True at 124 apiece, Bio and Trapp Mountain at 122 and Mercedes Won at 121. Music Merci and Tagel each drew 121 pounds.

Horses without stakes credentials aren’t ranked, which explains the exclusion of such colts as Houston, who won both of his starts but didn’t run in a stake.

Among the fillies, Open Mind was given 123 pounds. Next on the list were Some Romance, 121; Darby’s Daughter and Gild, 120 apiece; and Stock Ups, Born Famous and Wonders Delight, all at 119.

Easy Goer, the future-book favorite to win this year’s Kentucky Derby, is trying to become the first Experimental high weight to win the race since Spectacular Bid in 1979.

Horse Racing Notes

Abbott and Costello, famous for their who’s-on-first baseball routine, also did a routine on racing that involved mudders and horses eating their fodder. It was part of the Eclipse Awards’ show Friday night. The late Lou Costello had a 2-year-old, Bold Bazooka, who won a stake at Hollywood Park in 1955 and tied the world record for 6 furlongs.

Majesty’s Imp, a well-bred 3-year-old owned by former baseball manager Chuck Tanner, won a race at the Fair Grounds last weekend, but handicappers at the New Orleans track say that the horse doesn’t look like much of a Kentucky Derby candidate. . . . Majesty’s Imp’s trainer, Duke Ducoing, was kicked by another horse a couple of weeks ago and suffered a broken nose.

Veterinarian Jack Robbins, talking about the owners of the sidelined King Glorious: “You have to give them credit for being so careful with this horse. Nine out of 10 owners would have just thrown some Bute (a painkiller) in the horse’s feed tub and gone on with him.”

Had Alysheba been syndicated for breeding, Carl Icahn, the takeover specialist, reportedly would have bought 25%. . . . Kjell Qvale and his partners recently sold Golden Gate Fields for $41 million to Ladbroke, the group that owns about 1,800 betting shops in England and Ireland. “Now I’m a consultant who isn’t consulted very often,” Qvale said.

The wildest pari-mutuel payoffs last year were in the New Jersey Futurity at Freehold Raceway. Beta Bob, the winner, paid $41.20, $11.40 and $312.40. Nuke Image paid $7 and $113 for second and the show horse, Armbro Haggert, paid $340.80. The aberration occurred because a plunger bet $150,000 to show on the favorite, who broke stride and finished off the board.

Because 25,000 people in the market area play bingo, the Downs at Albuquerque, a track in New Mexico, will offer bingo between races. . . . Clarence Scharbauer, whose family raced Alysheba, also had a horse-of-the-year quarter horse, Double Bid, who won the title in 1959. . . . Chris Antley, the New York jockey who has had drug problems, is back riding at Aqueduct after rehabilitation.