Horse Racing / Bill Christine : Third in Juvenile Is Lucky Spot for Derby

Horses that finish third in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile have a better record in the Kentucky Derby than horses that have won the $1-million fall race for 2-year-olds.

In 1984, when the inaugural Breeders’ Cup was run at Hollywood Park, Spend a Buck was supplemented into the Juvenile for $120,000. His owner, Dennis Diaz, fell $12,000 short of breaking even when Spend a Buck ran third. But the next May, the colt won the Kentucky Derby.

Alysheba, the Derby winner in 1987, ran third in the Breeders’ Cup the previous year. The winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile has never won the Derby.

Last November at Churchill Downs, Tagel, a French-raced 2-year-old, ran third in the Juvenile, finishing 9 1/4 lengths behind the winner, Is It True, and trailing Easy Goer, the runner-up and 3-10 favorite, by eight lengths.

Francois Boutin, the French trainer who has Tagel, was at Santa Anita last weekend and said that the 3-year-old son of Cox’s Ridge is being prepared for the Kentucky Derby on May 6.

Tagel, bought at a Kentucky yearling sale for $725,000 by Allen Paulson, was sent back to France after the Breeders’ Cup. Boutin said that Tagel will run only one race there--either in late March or early April--and return to Churchill Downs the week of the Derby.

Although he seemed to be overmatched by Is It True and Easy Goer, Tagel actually ran an exceptional race in the Breeders’ Cup. It was his first race on dirt, the first time he has run counter-clockwise, and he went into the race with a sore mouth. Tagel was undefeated before the Breeders’ Cup, having won twice on the grass at Longchamp.

Bold Arrangement, an import from England, ran second to Ferdinand in the 1986 Derby. The week before the Derby, Bold Arrangement finished third at Keeneland in the Blue Grass, his first American start. Canonero II won the 1971 Derby coming off prep races in Venezuela, after running a couple of times as a 2-year-old at Del Mar.

Noel (Spec) Richardson, the last remaining principal from the controversial match race between Seabiscuit and Ligaroti at Del Mar in 1938, died last week at 75.

Richardson rode Ligaroti, who was nosed out by Seabiscuit in a $25,000 winner-take-all race. Ligaroti was owned by singer Bing Crosby and his son, Lin.

Richardson and George Woolf, Seabiscuit’s jockey, were locked in physical combat through the stretch. In a 1983 interview, Richardson said that if there had been head-on camera angles, as there are now, the stewards would have disqualified Seabiscuit and Woolf.

Bill Mills of Murrieta Hot Springs was an assistant starter who handled Seabiscuit in the gate that day.

“The gate was pulled into the infield after the start, and that’s where the assistant starters were until the horses passed the eighth pole,” Mills said.

“At that point, I stepped out onto the track to see the finish from behind. What I saw does not agree with what Spec Richardson remembers.

“Just past the eighth pole, when Seabiscuit started to move ahead of Ligaroti, Spec reached over and took hold of Seabiscuit’s saddle cloth, pulling him back. As the two horses neared the finish line, apparently Woolf realized what was happening and reached out and took hold of Ligaroti’s bridle rein.”

Peg Grueneberg’s unusual picture of jockey Nate Hubbard clutching his horse’s neck after he was jolted from the saddle at Golden Gate Fields last week is similar to a prize-winning shot taken at River Downs near Cincinnati in 1981.

In the River Downs shot, the horse went down on a sloppy track and was sliding across the finish line with jockey Bernie Sayler still aboard. Tom Baker, the photographer, received an Eclipse Award at a dinner in Miami Beach, Fla.

A few weeks before the dinner, Sayler called the Eclipse organizers, asking if they were going to pay his way to Florida.

“Without me, there wouldn’t have been a picture,” Sayler said.

He had a point, but he still didn’t get a free trip to the dinner.

Horse Racing Notes

Chris McCarron, who rode his first winner at Bowie in Maryland 15 years ago Thursday, is eligible for the first time to be voted into racing’s Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. McCarron won a record 546 races in 1974 and has about 4,500 lifetime. Another jockey who may be new to the Hall of Fame ballot this year is Eddie Delahoussaye. Sandy Hawley was on the ballot last year, but Angel Cordero was the only jockey who polled enough votes.

Cutlass Reality, who hasn’t run since the Breeders’ Cup, has been assigned 124 pounds for Sunday’s $250,000 San Antonio Handicap at Santa Anita. Other probable starters are Super Diamond, 121 pounds; Cherokee Colony, 120; Payant, 118; Stalwars, 115; and Stylish Winner, 112.

A 2-year-old doesn’t win world-champion quarter horse honors very often, but in a close vote, Merganser won the horse-of-the-year title for 1988. Merganser won three major races, including the $2.5-million All American Futurity. . . . Sunshine Forever, champion male turf horse in 1988, makes his debut as a 4-year-old on Saturday in the Canadian Turf Championship at Gulfstream Park.

If Dixieland Brass goes on to win the Kentucky Derby, his trainer, Charlie Peoples, will be called a genius because he added blinkers back in September. Dixieland Brass has won four of five starts since the equipment change. . . . It wasn’t well known that Easy Goer suffered sore shins after his second-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup, but the winter-book Kentucky Derby favorite is training splendidly in Florida.

The site for the 1990 Breeders’ Cup is expected to be announced on Kentucky Derby day--May 6--at Churchill Downs. Some Breeders’ Cup directors are uncomfortable with a return to the West Coast--because Hollywood Park had operational glitches when the races were held there in 1987 and because of the recent criticism of Santa Anita’s grass course. The favorites for 1990 are Churchill Downs and Belmont Park. This year’s races will be held at Florida’s Gulfstream Park on Nov. 4.