Western Playboy Eastern Favorite : Trainer Harvey Vanier Tries to Win Another Blue Grass

Trying to find veteran trainer Harvey Vanier around Keeneland in the morning is easy. Just look for the guy with the oldest down jacket and the most beat-up hat.

Also, the nicest guy on the backstretch. Harvey Lawrence Vanier, who will turn 65 next Friday, may never hit the pages of Gentleman’s Quarterly, but at the race track he is the gentleman’s gentleman. Vanier has heard discouraging words, but he’s never said one.

For the second time this decade, the avuncular, congenial Vanier, of Waterloo, Ill., will try to win Keeneland’s Blue Grass Stakes when he saddles Western Playboy, the even-money favorite, in today’s $250,000 running of the 1 1/8-mile stake.

Undefeated Dispersal, the winner of the Louisiana Derby, is also in the six-horse field, along with trainer Rusty Arnold’s entry of Feather Ridge and Tricky Creek, and Revive and Arcadia Falls, a couple of 3-year-olds that have been running at nearby Turfway Park.

The 65-year-old Blue Grass, which except for three World War II years has been run the week before the Kentucky Derby, is now being run three weeks ahead, because Keeneland officials felt that the race was drawing weak fields in recent years. The Blue Grass is the next-to-last major prep for the Derby, the last being the Wood Memorial next Saturday at Aqueduct, where Derby favorite Easy Goer will make his final appearance before running at Churchill Downs.

In the 1980s, the Blue Grass has produced only two Kentucky Derby winners, Gato Del Sol winning at Louisville after finishing second here, and Alysheba taking the Derby after he finished first and was disqualified to third place by the Keeneland stewards for causing interference in the stretch.

Vanier won the 1983 Blue Grass with Play Fellow, a 19-1 shot, after the roguish Marfa, the Santa Anita Derby winner, who was favored, tried to demolish all comers in one of the roughest runnings of the race. Marfa, who lost by a nose, was disqualified to fourth place, and his victims were still feeling his sting when the Derby was run nine days later.

Copelan, who led the Blue Grass until Marfa stormed into the picture, finished fourth and was too banged up to make the Derby. Desert Wine was third here and second in the Derby, and Play Fellow ran sixth at Churchill Downs.

Sunny’s Halo, trained by David Cross, won that Derby. “It was a pleasure to look at many of those horses in the paddock at Churchill Downs and see that they were too worn out to beat us,” Cross said.

There was a capacity field of 20 in the 1983 Derby, and Play Fellow needed to win the Blue Grass in order to have enough earnings to qualify.

Play Fellow, whose career ended when he was injured while running in the Hollywood Gold Cup the following year, sired Western Playboy, who’ll give Vanier another shot at winning the Blue Grass.

“This horse is as good as his sire,” Vanier said. “He’s getting better all the time, and he’s got more confidence than he used to have. He’ll try to go through holes that he wouldn’t have tried in the past. We don’t have to win here to go in the Derby, but he’s got to give me a strong finish, at least, for us to go. If he would be, say, a fading second, then we’d forget about the Derby.”

After winning the first race of his life last October at Keeneland, Western Playboy had two seconds and a first on off tracks at Churchill Downs in November. Sent to Florida for the winter, he started coughing, developed a virus and ran a temperature at Gulfstream Park and Vanier lost some time with him.

In his first start as a 3-year-old, Western Playboy ran second to Dixieland Brass in the Hutcheson, then he was fifth--refusing to go for a small hole coming into the stretch--in the Fountain of Youth. Sent off at 31-1 in the Florida Derby, he was a late-running second, five lengths behind Mercedes Won. Today, he’ll try to use the same style to overhaul the speedy Dispersal.

Two weeks ago, Western Playboy caught another off track at Turfway Park in the Jim Beam, which was the same distance as the Blue Grass. He won by 1 1/2 lengths, tying the track record with a time of 1:49.

Pat Day rode Western Playboy in the Florida Derby and the Beam, but he is committed to Easy Goer, so for today Vanier has hired Randy Romero to ride his chestnut for the first time. Romero’s Kentucky Derby horse was supposed to be Dixieland Brass, but he went lame in the Florida Derby and has been retired to stud. Romero also rode Feather Ridge in the Beam.

The other morning here, as Romero rode the Illinois-bred Western Playboy to the track for a half-mile workout, he gave himself a history lesson.

“An Illinois-bred ever win the Derby?” Romero asked.

“Yes, Dust Commander,” said Nancy Vanier, Harvey’s wife and assistant trainer, and part-owner of Western Playboy.

“Dust Commander, huh,” Romero said. That was in 1970, when a 12-year-old Romero was racing Shetland ponies at his father’s farm and fooling with quarter horses down in Louisiana.

Horse Racing Notes

Sunday Silence, winner of the Santa Anita Derby, and Hawkster, fourth in the race, are scheduled to share a plane to Louisville next Friday, which will give them two weeks at Churchill Downs prior to the Kentucky Derby. Hawkster, besides breaking through the gate prior to the start of the Santa Anita Derby, also bled slightly in the race and will be able to run on a diuretic that’s permitted for certified bleeders in Kentucky. Sunday Silence breezed three furlongs in :37 3/5 Friday morning at Santa Anita and will work five-eighths of a mile there next week before leaving.

Militron, winner of the Cherry Hill Mile, runs today in the Garden State Stakes, a 1 1/8-mile minor Kentucky Derby prep at Garden State Park. . . . There’s a chance for rain today at Keeneland, with temperatures in the low 60s.