Neil Drysdale: Light Touch and Heavy Hitter

Two new stars are ready to burst upon the American racing scene.

One is a 4-year-old colt named Rahy, who ran so brilliantly at Hollywood Park last month that he may prove to be Easy Goer’s main rival in the Breeders’ Cup Classic this fall.

The other is Neil Drysdale, Rahy’s trainer. Drysdale quietly has been compiling one of the best records in his profession, and he may be the heir apparent to Charles Whittingham as the dominant trainer in the West. Drysdale’s achievements often go unnoticed because he is a man who shuns the limelight, but Rahy might put him there, anyway.

Drysdale looks like the heir to Whittingham, his former mentor, in more ways than one. Whittingham’s methods always have been a distinct contrast to those of many trainers here, who like to rev up their horses fast and look for fast results. Whittingham is legendary for his patience, and he has had his greatest successes with late-developing older horses, with foreign imports and with distance runners, the types who require farsighted handling.

These are Drysdale’s fortes too. He is as patient with his horses as he has been with his own development as a trainer.

Drysdale was born in England, the scion of a family involved with steeplechase horses and hunters. He wanted to become a trainer, but he thought the opportunities would be greater in America than at home, so he came here to serve his apprenticeship.

He worked for two years on a farm in Florida, a year for a trainer in New York and then four years under Whittingham. Yet even then Whittingham told Drysdale he wasn’t ready to go out on his own. Whittingham sent his protege to Ireland to work for the great horseman Vincent O’Brien -- “to help round out my education,” Drysdale said.

Ever since he launched his training career, Drysdale has had solid owners behind him and has developed a succession of high-class runners. His performance has been remarkably consistent. From 1984 through 1988, he won with slightly more than 20 percent of the horses he saddled -- an outstanding record. Each year his horses earned around $2.5 million.

But this year Drysdale’s performance has been phenomenal. He has won with an incredible 30 percent of his starters. He ranks fourth in the country in purse winnings. He has scored a string of successes with Gorgeous, the second-best 3-year-old filly in the country. He won the West’s biggest race, the $1 million Santa Anita Handicap, with the 50-to-1 shot Martial Law.

He pulled off another shocker recently when Prized beat Sunday Silence in the $400,000 Swaps stakes. “Neil is outstanding at bringing a horse up to a particular race,” said Jeff Siegel, manager of the Clover Racing Stable, which owned both those long shots.

But no horse demonstrates the Drysdale touch any better than Rahy, a colt who, like his trainer, had to cross the Atlantic to fulfill his potential.

Rahy was one of the many high-priced yearlings purchased by Arab sheiks at American yearling sales and sent to England. His pedigree couldn’t be better: he is a son of the top stallion Blushing Groom and the champion mare Glorious Song, who had previously produced the brilliant Devil’s Bag.

“He showed promise as a 2 year old,” Drysdale said, “and they were quite keen on him, but he didn’t train on at 3” -- i.e., he was a big disappointment. But American racing fans know there are plenty of horses who are excellent runners on dirt but can’t handle turf, and vice versa. Rahy, conceivably, could have been one of them. So he was sent to the United States, where he would have a chance to run on the dirt. And he has been unbeatable.

Rahy won a minor allowance race at Golden Gate Fields by six lengths. He ran a mile at Hollywood Park, battled head-and-head for the lead in a seemingly suicidal 44 seconds flat, but drew away to win by five lengths. And then, in the $300,000 Bel Air Handicap at Hollywood, he sat just behind leaders who were running a half mile in 44, swooped past them and drew away to win by 10 lengths. He ran the mile in 1:33 flat over a track that, by California standards, was not exceptionally fast.

To speed handicappers, this was an even better performance than Easy Goer’s celebrated Belmont Stakes triumph. It was an effort that belonged in the Seattle Slew-Affirmed-Spectacular Bid class. Rahy still hasn’t run beyond a mile, but Drysdale thinks he has the pedigree, the temperament and the style to be effective at 1 1/4 miles, the distance of the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

What was almost as amazing as the brilliance of Rahy’s races was the way Drysdale prepared the colt for them. It is an axiom in the West that horses must be imbued with speed, and that the way to sharpen them is with fast workouts.

In his first race at Hollywood, Rahy was facing a speedball named Mi Preferido, whose most recent works included a half mile in 46 flat and five furlongs in 57 4-5. By contrast, Rahy had gone a half mile in a laughably slow 51 2-5, five eighths in 1:02 3-5. Yet when the gate opened, Rahy was able to blow Mi Preferido off the track.

“I almost never work horses fast,” Drysdale said. “I think when you work horses you just try to get them fit and maintain that level of fitness. And once they’re fit, their natural ability takes over.”

To Drysdale, this may sound elementary, but to others it seems a source of wonder and mystery that a trainer can work a horse in 51 2-5 then get him to run a half mile in competition in 44, effortlessly. Drysdale’s skills have earned him recognition and admiration in California. Rahy may display his talents to a national audience.