Pincay Wins Again When the Stakes Are High : He Sweeps Weekend Features by Riding Bayakoa Home in Santa Margarita

Early this season, Laffit Pincay would usually win the stakes races at Santa Anita on Wednesdays. Now he’s winning the rich races every day.

On Sunday, about 24 hours after he rode Kool Arrival to victory in the Las Virgenes, Pincay booted another filly home. Pincay and Bayakoa safely distanced themselves from heavily favored Goodbye Halo early and held on through the stretch for a two-length victory in the $300,000 Santa Margarita Handicap before a crowd of 35,526.

A year ago, Pincay, 42, rode through most of the Santa Anita season with a sore back. The Panama native fractured a vertebra on the second day of the meeting and didn’t resume riding for three weeks. He finished with only three stakes victories, not much of a showing for a jockey who has won more stakes at Santa Anita than anyone except Bill Shoemaker.

Pincay’s heady victory aboard Bayakoa Sunday was his 12th in a stake this meeting and another win on the card gave him 56 victories, only six short of what he registered all last season. With 30 stakes still to be run, Pincay is expected to break the record of 19 stakes victories that he set at Santa Anita in 1983.

That year, Pincay’s major winner was Chinook Pass, who won four stakes. This time, Kool Arrival has furnished Pincay with three stakes wins, but the rest have come with different horses, and seven of the 12 haven’t been favored, which was Bayakoa’s situation in the 1 1/8-mile Santa Margarita.

Because Miss Brio, suffering from a bruised foot, was scratched, Bayakoa became the second choice in a seven-horse field, with Goodbye Halo, seeking her third straight victory this year, going off at 7-10.

Even an accomplished filly such as Goodbye Halo wasn’t able to spot Bayakoa seven pounds--125 to 118--and an 8 1/2-length lead after the first half-mile. Not only was Bayakoa on the lead, with Goodbye Halo in fifth place, but Pincay’s 5-year-old mare also was not pressured by any of the others.

Goodbye Halo and her jockey, Pat Day, narrowed the gap to four lengths with an eighth of a mile to go, but Bayakoa had plenty left.

“When my horse opened up a four-length lead on the far turn, I got pretty confident,” said Ron McAnally, who trains Bayakoa for Frank Whitham, a banker and cattleman from Leoti, Kan.

Goodbye Halo finished 5 1/2 lengths ahead of No Review, who was a half-length ahead of Carita Tostada, the fourth-place finisher. The stewards disallowed a foul claim by Pat Valenzuela, Carita Tostada’s jockey, against Day and Goodbye Halo for alleged interference on the far turn.

Bayakoa paid $9, $3.20 and $2.60, with Goodbye Halo returning $2.60 and $2.40 and $3.40 for No Review. Bayakoa was timed in 1:48 2/5, a good time for a damp track listed as fast but playing dull all day. Bayakoa earned $180,000, which was $20,000 more than her career earnings for 17 previous starts.

McAnally bought Bayakoa for an undisclosed sum on behalf of Whitman at the end of 1987. The mare won three of eight starts in Argentina, but McAnally had never seen her run and was concerned about one of her legs being slightly crooked. But a Kentucky veterinarian told McAnally that the problem didn’t seem to affect her running.

In America, Bayakoa won three of nine before Sunday, but her best races were two seconds against the consistent Miss Brio. Despite breaking through the gate before the Santa Maria Handicap three weeks ago, Bayakoa gave Miss Brio a battle before losing by less than a length.

On Sunday, Pincay was determined to get Bayakoa to relax in the gate, and she may have been too calm, because the break wasn’t smooth.

“She broke to the outside at the start,” Pincay said. “I thought the only chance I had was for her to relax. I thought I would be on the lead, but I would have let somebody else go if they wanted.

“My horse was going real nice and easy around the first turn. She’s got a lot of ability. I hit her left-handed in the stretch.”

It was the sixth time Pincay has won the Santa Margarita, which ties Shoemaker’s record.

Day conceded that Bayakoa got too far away from Goodbye Halo, but he still liked his filly’s race.

“She was not quite as aggressive in the body of the race as the last race,” Day said of Goodbye Halo. “But she kicked hard at the end. When I called on her in the middle of the turn, she gave me as much as she could.”

Today, in the San Luis Obispo Handicap, Pincay rides Trokhos, who isn’t expected to beat Great Communicator, the horse who won the stake and beat Trokhos last year. But a month ago Trokhos and Pincay won the San Marcos Handicap when they weren’t supposed to, so there’s no discounting a weekend hat trick for the sizzling jockey. It would have to be a Panama hat, of course.

Horse Racing Notes

Albert Barrera, one of the six trainers whose horses have tested positive for cocaine, is scheduled to have a hearing with the Santa Anita stewards Thursday, but because of lengthy testimony, a ruling--if there is one--is expected to come later. At least one of Barrera’s five horses has been turned over to his brother, Larry. Another Albert Barrera horse, Perceive Arrogance, is a candidate for the Santa Anita Handicap on March 5. . . . Because four of the horsemen named in the cocaine scandal--including Wayne Lukas and Laz Barrera--had horses test positive in meetings before the current one at Santa Anita, their hearings will be before an administrative law judge rather than stewards. . . . A group of Santa Anita trainers met Sunday morning at the track to discuss changes in the trainer-responsibility rule. “It’s difficult to have someone with your horses all the time, but I don’t know how the rule could be changed,” trainer Ron McAnally said. “How long has it been on the books? A hundred years?”

McAnally’s Hawkster, who has been working sharply at Hollywood Park, will be flown to Florida next weekend, to run in the Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park on March 4. . . . Trainer Mel Stute said Double Quick, who has been working at Oaklawn Park since winning the El Camino Real Derby at Bay Meadows, will run in the Remington Derby in Oklahoma City on March 8. . . . Chris McCarron will ride Cherokee Colony for the first time in the Santa Anita Handicap, replacing Rafael Meza. McCarron won the Big ‘Cap with Alysheba last year. . . . Jose Santos, the Eclipse Award winner for 1988, will ride Stalwars in the Big ‘Cap.

The trial regarding the harness horsemen’s lawsuit against the California Horse Racing Board, which alleges conflict of interest by some board members, begins Tuesday in Superior Court at Sacramento. . . . Emperor’s Turn, who was the first of the six horses to test positive for cocaine, when he ran last October at Santa Anita, won Sunday’s first race. Emperor’s Turn has been claimed three times since he ran in the controversial race for trainer Roger Stein.

Agotaras, winner of the Pasadena Stakes, is sidelined with a bone chip in the knee that will not require surgery. . . . Pen Bal Lady, winner of three major races last year, and is five or six weeks away from a race. . . . Starting Wednesday, Santa Anita’s first post will be 1 p.m. . . . Alex Campbell Jr., co-owner of Goodbye Halo, didn’t win the Santa Margarita, but his Dreamy Mimi captured Sunday’s Busher Handicap at Aqueduct. . . . Jockey Julie Krone won the $200,000 Orchid Handicap with Gaily Gaily Sunday at Gulfstream Park, with Anka Germania finishing second in the final race of her career. . . . Vicky Aragon, whose arm is in a cast after cracking an elbow in a training accident at Golden Gate Fields, is recuperating in Los Angeles and won’t resume riding for two months.