HORSE RACING : A Good Omen for Sunday Silence?

Will Sunday Silence return as good as ever from his surgery? Only time and Charlie Whittingham will tell. But the results of last Sunday’s seventh race at Hollywood Park had to be encouraging for anyone who has ever had a horse with a bone chip removed from a knee.

Crown Collection, a 3-year-old son of Alydar who made some strange headlines in the past year, ran for the first time since arthroscopic knee surgery last spring and won the six-furlong allowance race by nearly three lengths.

The results were a pleasant surprise for the Wayne Lukas stable, since Crown Collection has never been known as a sprinter. Neither had he won a race in almost 15 months.

Dr. Greg Ferraro, who removed two chips from Sunday Silence’s right knee two weeks ago, performed a similar operation on Crown Collection in March, after the colt’s last-place finish in an allowance race at Santa Anita.

At the time, it was no great loss to racing. Crown Collection had won his first two races the previous August at Del Mar, but his subsequent record was peppered with crushing defeats. They included a ninth-place finish as part of the favored entry in the Del Mar Futurity and another ninth at 102-1 odds in the Florida Derby.

In the midst of his frustrating run of seven consecutive defeats, Crown Collection’s name was linked to the alleged cocaine positives announced by the California Horse Racing Board last February. Supposedly, traces of the drug were found in the colt’s frozen urine samples taken from his two Del Mar wins.

But the racing board backed down when the California attorney general’s office got a good look at the details of the case, along with independent lab reports that indicated the sample was clean. All charges were dropped, leaving the board embarrassed and its official lab open to lawsuits.

Crown Collection, recuperating at owner Gene Klein’s Rancho el Rayo, became a footnote in an unhappy chapter of local racing lore.

Now he’s back, apparently ready to pick up where he left off after those first two races. He’s got a new owner, a new knee and turn of foot he never had before.

“Last Sunday was the first time he ever showed that kind of speed in a race,” said Jeff Lukas, Wayne’s son and chief assistant who supervises Crown Collection at Hollywood Park.

“The knee had to be bothering him in those last couple of races. And the time off did him good. He was always a big colt. Now he’s stronger and more mature. We’re planning to run him through the Strub Series at Santa Anita.”

Crown Collection was a $575,000 yearling purchase by Klein, who banked just $47,840 with the colt before putting him up for sale with the rest of his horses on Nov. 6 at Keeneland in Lexington, Ky. Crown Collection brought a final bid of $170,000 from William T. Young and Wayne Lukas himself.

Sunday’s race was the first time Crown Collection had ever run as short a distance as six furlongs. His final time of 1:10 4/5 was accomplished over a fast but dull track. Earlier in the day, $10,000 claimers ran the same distance in 1:10 1/5, but times grew progressively slower as the cool afternoon wore on.

The first stop in the Strub Series is the seven-furlong Malibu Stakes on Santa Anita’s opening day, Dec. 26, followed by the 1 1/8-mile San Fernando Stakes on Jan. 14 and the 1 1/4-mile Charles H. Strub Stakes on Feb. 4. Crown Collection will have his hands full with the likes of Prized, Hawkster, Music Merci, Bruho, Mr. Bolg and Quiet American in those races.

Crown Collection showed only two recent workouts beneath his past performance lines for last Sunday’s comeback--a pair of five-furlong drills on Nov. 13 and 20 at Hollywood Park.

Normally, when a horse has not raced within 30 days, the track stewards prefer to see at least three recent workouts recorded before allowing it to run. Crown Collection had not raced since March 26.

But nothing is carved in stone. The stewards have the discretion to allow a horse to run as long as they are convinced it is fit and has been in steady training.

“We weren’t particularly happy with the fact that (Crown Collection) showed only two works,” said steward Pete Pedersen. “Our rule of thumb, however, is that we must be reasonably satisfied with the horse’s condition based on what we can find out about his recent training.”

The stewards learned that Crown Collection had been working at the Wayne Lukas Training Center, just east of Del Mar, before he was shipped to Kentucky for the Klein sale. Though not an officially recognized training facility--as are Galway Downs and San Luis Rey Downs--the Lukas center has its own six-furlong track.

“He’d had several good, solid mile works down there,” Jeff Lukas said. “The sale interrupted his training only slightly.”

A total of $55.3 million was bet on this year’s Breeders’ Cup races at 149 North American sites. Of that amount, $10.4 million was bet in California.

Pretty impressive figures . . . until you digest the numbers coming out of the Japan Cup last Sunday in Tokyo.

--Amount wagered on the Japan Cup program: $222.7 million, or 32,073,472,400 yen.

--Amount bet on the Japan Cup alone: $136.5 million, or 19,662,099,200 yen.

With Japan’s extensive off-track betting network--which includes telephone accounts and several huge off-track emporiums--more than 80% of the wagers were placed away from Tokyo Race Course on the big day.

At the recently concluded Oak Tree meeting at Santa Anita, the proportions were just the opposite: 81% of the handle was bet at the track and 19% was bet at off-track outlets.

Everything is relative, though. The price of a steak dinner at the Keio Plaza Hotel, official Japan Cup headquarters: $100, and it wasn’t even Kobe beef.

Horse Racing Notes

After scratching Ruhlmann from the Citation Handicap last Sunday, Charlie Whittingham says the colt will probably run in the Native Diver Handicap at Hollywood on Dec. 23. “He’s probably not the greatest turf horse in the world anyway,” Whittingham said. “And when it rained the night before, the course came up just dead enough to give me second thoughts about running him.” . . . Latest contribution to the top-10-horses-of-the-decade debate, in order: Spectacular Bid, John Henry, Alysheba, Precisionist, Sunday Silence, Easy Goer, Spend a Buck, Slew o’ Gold, Perrault, Personal Ensign.