Woodbine Gets Into High-Stakes Game With a $1-Million Race

The first $1-million thoroughbred race was held at Arlington Park in the summer of 1981, and even though the price wasn’t necessarily right, the imitators soon started lining up, perpetuating the American way.

In 1983, Hollywood Park made the Hollywood Futurity worth $1 million. The following year, the Breeders’ Cup was born and there were seven seven-figure races run in the same day, with one of them worth $2 million and another going for $3 million.

By 1987, with the Arlington Million, the Hollywood Futurity and the Breeders’ Cup still going strong with seven-figure purses, Santa Anita, Belmont Park, Saratoga and Louisiana Downs had joined the $1-million race club. Pimlico began a Maryland Million Day, which will be held today, but that figure represented the total purses for the card. And one track--Garden State Park--began and then canceled its $1-million race, the Jersey Derby getting devalued after a two-year run.

The newest North American group to try a $1-million race has been Woodbine, the Ontario Jockey Club’s flagship track in suburban Toronto. Next year, Woodbine will become the first track, other than a Breeders’ Cup host, to run two $1-million races when its Rothmans International, a major grass stake, jumps to seven figures.

Woodbine’s original $1-million stake--the Molson Export Million, which will have a second running today--suggests, however, that racing is already saturated with rich races and doesn’t have enough quality horses to run in them.

The current year might be a bad example, because unlike other years in the 1980s, there is a lack of depth in almost all divisions. But it is a matter of record that, generally speaking, the purses of the $1-million races have done little to attract extra horses.

Neither Easy Goer nor Sunday Silence, the two best 3-year-olds in the United States, is running in the Molson. In fact, Easy Goer, the odds-on choice for horse of the year, seldom runs outside New York and will also skip the $1-million Super Derby in two weeks at Louisiana Downs, even though the track offered to double the purse if both Sunday Silence and Easy Goer ran.

Until Sunday Silence developed a cough, which cost him some training time at Del Mar, Woodbine officials thought that trainer Charlie Whittingham would bring the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner here.

Woodbine wooed Whittingham all summer. The track brought him here for the 130th running of the Queen’s Plate in July and introduced him to England’s Queen Mother, but social niceties aside, there were reasons other than a cough at Del Mar for Sunday Silence’s absence here today. Early on, Whittingham was talking about $1 million in Canada not being the equivalent of $1 million in American money. Because of the exchange rate, American horses are actually running for about $850,000 in purse money.

Also, Whittingham has already run twice in the Super Derby and running Sunday Silence in both Louisiana and Canada would have meant a lot of shipping for the California colt, plus two races in as many weeks.

“There are so many places to run for big money, but you can’t run every place,” Whittingham says.

And at the end of the year, horsemen have to be particularly selective, because their goal is the Breeders’ Cup, which gives a winner a large purse as well as much prestige.

Another thing about the Molson Million is that it’s not regarded as a major race in the eyes of an American committee that ranks stakes in North America according to several criteria, the most important being quality fields.

The first two runnings will do little to help the Molson’s status, although this year’s field is stronger than the inaugural year, because Clever Trevor, a good second to Easy Goer in the Travers at Saratoga last month, and Prized, an upset winner over Sunday Silence in the Swaps at Hollywood Park in July, are here.

Last year, however, the Molson had neither quantity nor quality. The winner in the seven-horse field was Ballindaggin, a New York-bred who was winless in eight other starts for the year.

There were 75 horses nominated for this year’s Molson, including six from trainer Wayne Lukas’ far-flung operation. Of the many American horses on that list, dozens race on legalized medication--Butazolidin for sore animals and Lasix for bleeders--which isn’t permitted in Canada. Next year, however, the Canadian rules will be changed and those medications will be allowed on a restricted basis.

Molson has one more year on a contract with Woodbine to sponsor the race, the brewery accounting for $600,000 of the purse and participating in a cooperative advertising campaign.

“We’re satisfied with the way the race has gone,” said Brant Scrimshaw, who is promotions manager for Molson in Ontario. “This is only the second year for the race, and we realize that it takes time to build it up.”

Molson, the oldest and largest brewer in Canada and the sixth-largest in North America, had record earnings of $74 million for a fiscal year that ended in March and enjoys fringe benefits beyond the mere running of the race. Antitrust laws require that Woodbine make other beers available at the track, but the only draft beer sold there is Molson.

The success of the Rothmans International, a 51-year-old grass race and the last stake Secretariat ever won, undoubtedly influenced Molson in getting into the racing business. The cigarette company began sponsoring the International in 1981 and estimated last year that the race accounted for about $700,000 in free advertising. Concentrating on the International, Rothmans has dropped its sponsorship of a touring show featuring antique cars.

Rothmans may be happy with its soon-to-be Million, but tracks that run seven-figure stakes in the United States must wonder if the extra money makes any difference.

At Saratoga, the Travers became a $1-million race in 1987. Whittingham ran a California horse there once, but last year only six horses started and this year, because Easy Goer was such a cinch to win, there was another six-horse field, even though second place was worth $239,470 and third place paid $130,620.

The Hollywood Futurity was won by Stephan’s Odyssey, a New York horse, in 1984, but its fields have been largely California-based runners. Broad Brush, an Eastern horse, won the $1-million Santa Anita Handicap in 1987, but the increased purse has lured hardly any horses from outside California.

The Jockey Club Gold Cup, which in the days before the Breeders’ Cup was the season-ending highlight for handicap horses, was worth $1 million for the first time in 1987, when just six horses ran, and last year there were only four horses, none of them prominent, in an embarrassing day for the New York racing Establishment.

The Arlington Million drew stars from the start, with John Henry, Perrault, Estrapade and Manila among its winners, but the race has never lived up to its objective of attracting the European grass standouts.

The dirt race that has done the most with a $1-million purse in the shortest time is the Super Derby, which was won by the Kentucky Derby winner, Alysheba, the first year it went to seven figures, and last year was won by Seeking the Gold, a classy shipper from New York.

And this year the Super Derby has Sunday Silence, another Kentucky Derby winner. But it still couldn’t get the horse of the moment, Easy Goer. Not even at twice the price.

Horse Racing Notes

Sunday Silence worked a mile in a blazing 1:33 2/5 at Del Mar Saturday, one-fifth of a second off the track record for a race. . . . In order of favoritism in the morning line, today’s Molson Million field consists of Clever Trevor, Prized, Domasca Dan, Charlie Barley, Mercedes Won, Toledo Salamanca, Doc’s Leader and Pause Again. . . . Mercedes Won has won only two of 10 starts--both at Finger Lakes, a minor league track in upstate New York--since winning the Florida Derby, but he’s three for three at Woodbine. He was voted Canada’s best 2-year-old colt last year. . . . Clever Trevor probably needs to win today before his owner, Don McNeill, will consider running against Easy Goer in the Breeders’ Cup.