Breeder’s Cup Classic Is Shaping Up Almost as If It’s a Match Race : Horse Racing: Easy Goer and Sunday Silence go head-to-head again with horse-of-the-year honors at stake at Gulfstream.

Despite a handicap division that is one of the weakest in years, and a crop of 3-year-olds that has been neither deep nor consistent, the Breeders’ Cup is expected to have an exciting race Saturday when the $3-million Classic is run at Gulfstream Park.

The renewal of the Triple Crown rivalry between Easy Goer and Sunday Silence has created the most anticipation for a Breeders’ Cup stake since the annual seven-race extravaganza began in 1984.

There was a buildup for the Classic at Hollywood Park in 1987, when Ferdinand nosed out the late-running Alysheba in a rare matchup of Kentucky Derby winners, but the Easy Goer-Sunday Silence showdown is generating even more attention. Gulfstream announced a couple of days ago that it is increasing its limit on Saturday’s attendance from 53,000 to 55,000 and a capacity crowd appears certain.

What they will see is an all-out battle for a first-place purse of $1.35 million in a race that will determine the horse of the year. Easy Goer and Sunday Silence are strong horses in a weak year, and there are really no other contenders. In the unlikely event that both horses lose, the Eclipse Awards electorate will still be obligated to vote for one of them.

Although Sunday Silence holds a 2-1 edge over Easy Goer, having beaten him in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness before losing the Belmont Stakes, Easy Goer will be heavily favored in the Classic. Easy Goer’s victory in the Belmont was overwhelming. He beat Sunday Silence by eight lengths while running the second-fastest time in the history of the race, and since then he has registered four impressive victories in other major races.

Sunday Silence, on the other hand, was beaten again six weeks after the Belmont, losing to Prized in the Swaps at Hollywood Park. In his only other start, Sunday Silence was a six-length winner against an ordinary group of opponents in the Super Derby at Louisiana Downs.

There will be more prerace attention for Sunday Silence than Easy Goer, but for reasons unrelated to the horses.

Last Friday, the stewards at Santa Anita handed a 60-day suspension to jockey Pat Valenzuela after he failed a drug test. Valenzuela has ridden Sunday Silence in all but one of the colt’s 11 races.

Chris McCarron, who has ridden Sunday Silence in workouts, will ride for trainer Charlie Whittingham in the Classic. McCarron is more of a national name than Valenzuela and has won two Breeders’ Cup races--with Alysheba in the 1988 Classic and with Precisionist in the 1985 Sprint.

“This is not a tough horse to ride,” Whittingham said. “I knew that if I didn’t use Pat, there were a lot of jockeys around who could get the job done.”

It was Valenzuela, however, who outrode Pat Day in the Preakness as Sunday Silence beat Easy Goer by a nose in a bang-up finish. Day, in fact, has admitted that he wasn’t at his best that day.

“We very possibly shouldn’t have been defeated,” Day said. “I got hammered pretty good after that race, and I’m the first to say that it wasn’t unwarranted. The race was a real dogfight. My horse made a big move down the backside, catapulted himself to the lead, and if there were any mistakes made, it was probably at that point, when I just didn’t continue on with him.”

Some of Day’s subsequent rides on Easy Goer have been the subject of more favorable discussion.

In the Whitney Handicap at Saratoga, they were blocked behind a wall of horses at the head of the stretch, but Easy Goer eased through and won by 4 1/2 lengths. And in the Travers two weeks later, trainer Shug McGaughey was surprised to see Easy Goer five lengths behind Clever Trevor at the quarter pole, but with hardly any urging from Day the big chestnut flew through the stretch to win by three lengths.

In what is a minority opinion--but an opinion from the man who counts--Valenzuela was criticized by Whittingham for his ride in the Swaps, when Sunday Silence lost a big lead in the stretch and was overtaken by Prized for a three-quarter-length upset. Whittingham thought Valenzuela moved too soon with the horse.

Sunday Silence swerved through the stretch in winning the Kentucky Derby and Whittingham said he was also distracted in the Swaps. For the Super Derby, the trainer outfitted the black colt with a shadow roll, a piece of sheepskin that fits over a horse’s nose and is supposed to keep him from looking at the ground.

“The shadow roll had nothing to do with the way he won,” Whittingham said. “He won because Pat rode him right again. You don’t send a horse out to a five- or six-length lead when you know he likes to duck around. And you can’t whip this horse, because he doesn’t like it a bit.”

Sunday Silence may have had trouble in the stretch of the Derby and the Swaps because they are 1 1/4-mile races, which is probably his maximum distance. Whittingham said that the 1 1/2-mile distance was Sunday Silence’s undoing in the Belmont. The Classic is 1 1/4 miles.

Whittingham sent Sunday Silence through a couple of productive workouts at Santa Anita recently before the trainer accompanied the Halo colt on a flight to Florida Friday.

Just after dawn Saturday, McGaughey isolated himself in a front-row box in Gulfstream’s deserted grandstand as he watched Easy Goer work five-eighths of a mile in a sharp one minute flat. The colt galloped another eighth of a mile in 1:12.

“The work was even better than what I expected him to do,” McGaughey said. “It’s different galloping out that extra eighth here compared to Belmont Park, because at Gulfstream the turn is real close to the finish line and a horse can’t run in a straight line once he gets past the wire. I thought he might only gallop out in something like 1:13 for that reason, so he finished up real good.”

Whittingham said that he received a phone call Friday night from Valenzuela. “He told me he was sorry about what happened,” the trainer said. “He said that he had lied to me and he apologized.”

Whittingham didn’t elaborate about the conversation.

In the Classic, Easy Goer will be expected to reach a pinnacle that has been virtually blueprinted for the well-bred son of Alydar since birth.

Sunday Silence, on the other hand, is a colt who has risen from obscurity after almost dying at birth and twice being pulled out of sales by his principal owner, Arthur Hancock, when the price wouldn’t move any higher than $32,000. Now Sunday Silence has earned $3.2 million, about $600,000 less than Easy Goer.

While he was winning the Derby and the Preakness, Sunday Silence inflated his reputation, but the raves for him have been nothing like the praise for Easy Goer during his five-race winning streak.

P.G. Johnson, a New York trainer, says Easy Goer is the best horse since Secretariat, who won the Triple Crown in 1973. Another trainer, Frank LaBoccetta, says that Easy Goer might be as good as Spectacular Bid, horse of the year in 1980.

Woody Stephens, who won the Belmont five consecutive times this decade, has a more temperate appraisal of Easy Goer.

“He’s a good horse, but I don’t think he’s a Secretariat because of the horses he’s beaten,” Stephens said. “Who’s he had to beat? He’s beat Whittingham’s horse, and I don’t compare that horse to some of mine, like Forty Niner and Swale. Sunday Silence isn’t a great horse, but he’s got a great trainer.”

Easy Goer and Sunday Silence have so dominated the year that only six other horses are running against them on Saturday. Jerry Fanning, who trains Present Value, admits that he is running for third place. And the trainers of Western Playboy and Mi Selecto didn’t consider the Classic until recently, when Western Playboy won the Pennsylvania Derby by 17 lengths and Mi Selecto upset Blushing John in the Meadowlands Cup.

Others in the Classic are Cryptoclearance, who has been fifth in the Classic two consecutive years, and Slew City Slew, who finished last in the stake a year ago, and Blushing John.

Before he ran seventh, 20 lengths behind Mi Selecto, at the Meadowlands, Blushing John was considered a dangerous third choice behind Easy Goer and Sunday Silence. Whittingham welcomes Blushing John’s presence in the Classic.

“He has a little early speed,” the trainer said. “We might be able to sit just off of him in the early part.”

At first glance, it might seem that Easy Goer’s top-heavy New York record makes him vulnerable when he leaves town. He has won 12 of 16 starts, and is 11 for 12 in New York. Of the three other defeats, two were at Churchill Downs--in the Derby and last year’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile--and there was also the Preakness at Pimlico.

Easy Goer’s lone out-of-town victory, however, was by 8 3/4 lengths at Gulfstream Park in his 3-year-old debut.

Easy Goer trained here all last winter. The goal then was the Kentucky Derby, a dream that was shattered, and now Easy Goer is back at Gulfstream, causing McGaughey and owner Ogden Phipps to dream lofty dreams again.