Horse Racing : Prized Got Big Prize, but His Trainer Would Have Liked Points, Too

Trainer Neil Drysdale is worried about points--the points his horses may need to qualify for the Breeders’ Cup races at Gulfstream Park Nov. 4.

“We won the race, but we didn’t get any points,” Drysdale said after Prized won the Molson Export Million Sunday at Woodbine.

Only 2 years old, the Molson race is not graded and consequently, Prized received no Breeders’ Cup points. If the seven races at Gulfstream are oversubscribed, fields are determined by points horses have earned through wins, seconds and thirds in graded stakes throughout the year. The maximum number of starters for each race is 14.

Prized is going to Belmont Park for the $1-million Jockey Club Gold Cup Oct. 7, when a win would be worth five Breeders’ Cup points.

“This horse should like the mile-and-a-half distance,” Drysdale said. “It doesn’t look as though Easy Goer will be running in the Jockey Club, and that’s good, because we want to stay away from him as long as we can.”

Drysdale won races in two countries last weekend, with Miss Brio taking the Maskette at Belmont Saturday.

In 1980, Drysdale won the Maskette with Bold ‘n Determined, beating that year’s Kentucky Derby winner, Genuine Risk. In last Saturday’s Maskette, Miss Brio beat Winning Colors, who in 1988 was the first filly to win the Derby since Genuine Risk.

Miss Brio isn’t nominated for the Breeders’ Cup, but she could still run if her owner, Will Farish, paid a supplementary fee of $120,000. How Miss Brio runs at Belmont against Open Mind, the best filly in the country, will determine whether the money is paid.

Prized, Miss Brio, Gorgeous and Rahy would give Drysdale a strong contingent for the Breeders’ Cup. Drysdale is one of only four trainers who have saddled more than one Breeders’ Cup winner in the series’ first 35 races. Wayne Lukas leads with nine; Drysdale, Mel Stute and Francois Boutin have two winners apiece.

Drysdale’s wins came from the first three Breeders’ Cup horses he started, with Princess Rooney taking the Distaff at Hollywood Park in 1984 and Tasso taking the Juvenile at Aqueduct in 1985. Since then, he has failed to win with four starters and didn’t have a horse running in the seven races at Churchill Downs last year.

Easy Goer, seeking his fourth consecutive major victory, carries high weight of 122 pounds Saturday in the $750,000 Woodward Handicap at Belmont.

Cryptoclearance and Proper Reality, at 120 pounds apiece, are next on the weights for the 1 1/4-mile race. Easy Goer is actually rated eight pounds better than those two older horses, but he gets six pounds off because he’s a 3-year-old.

Blushing John will get a new rider in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, because Pat Day is committed to ride Easy Goer. Day rode Blushing John to victory last Saturday against a weak field in the Washington Park Handicap at Delaware Park.

Jockey Gary Stevens is likely to miss his third Breeders’ Cup as the result of the broken hand and wrist he suffered last week at Del Mar.

In 1985, three weeks before the Breeders’ Cup, Stevens suffered major knee and shoulder damage in a training accident at Santa Anita and was sidelined for 2 1/2 months. In 1987, Stevens broke his right ankle in a starting-gate accident at Santa Anita, a week before the Breeders’ Cup at Hollywood Park.

Despite riding in only three Breeders’ Cups, Stevens is among the leaders in mounts with 13. He has been second four times and his mounts have earned $1.6 million.

When With Approval became the third horse in history to sweep the Canadian Triple Crown this year, the $1-million bonus was paid by an insurance company that charged the sponsoring Bank of Montreal a $100,000 premium.

The premium is likely to be tripled or quadrupled next year, which might mean the end of the bonus.

Horse Racing Notes

Rumors persist that there’s going to be a front-office shake-up at the New York tracks . . . King Glorious, unable to run against Sunday Silence in the Super Derby at Louisiana Downs Sept. 24 because of a training injury, will run in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint if he runs at all at Gulfstream. . . . Hollywood Park will run its Derby Nov. 19, the Starlet Dec. 3, the Turf Cup Dec. 10 and the $1-million Hollywood Futurity Dec. 17. . . . Clover Racing Stables, which owns Prized, ran fourth in Ireland Sunday with Pictorial, a 2-year-old son of Preakness winner Aloma’s Ruler. Pictorial will run once more in Ireland and then be sent to the United States for the Laurel Futurity. . . . In the movie “Let It Ride,” which is about Richard Dreyfuss making a score at Hialeah, an opening scene was cut. It showed Dreyfuss giving a comical speech at a meeting of Gamblers Anonymous that was invaded by robbers. Some of the scenes from the film were done at Santa Anita.