HOLLYWOOD PARK : After 3 Losses, Cheval Volant Wins Starlet

As far as owner Steve Shapiro was concerned, everything was in place for a perfect case of history being repeated with his 2-year-old filly Cheval Volant in the $500,000 Starlet Stakes Sunday at Hollywood Park.

“Same jockey, same sire, and almost identical circumstances leading up to the race as the winner last year, Stocks Up,” Shapiro said. And what do you know? Same result.

Shapiro and partners Bill Stratton, David Stark and trainer Ken Jumps were confident Cheval Volant would at least get a piece of the Starlet purse, despite the fact she was 20-1 on the morning line, 25-1 in the actual betting and had not been close to winning since mid-August.

But 2-year-old fillies are an unpredictable bunch, usually providing more shockers than any other division. So it should not have been surprising at all when Cheval Volant sustained a long, hard run to win the one-mile Starlet by 1 1/2 lengths over the longest shot in the field, Annual Reunion.

Cheval Volant was sired by Kris S. and ridden by Alex Solis, the same connections that clicked for Stocks Up in the 1988 Starlet. And like Stocks Up, Cheval Volant preceded her Starlet score with setbacks in the Oak Leaf Stakes at Santa Anita and the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies.

Jumps, her 32-year-old trainer, managed to quell his post-race excitement long enough to offer a plausible analysis of Cheval Volant’s three straight losses--by a total of more than 20 lengths--leading up to the Starlet. Her most recent win came in the Aug. 16 Sorrento Stakes at Del Mar.

“Circumstances have worked against her since then,” said Jumps, who helped train Kris S. when he worked for James Sacco. “She never gave us any reason to lose faith.

“In the Del Mar Debutante she caught a speed-favoring track and got beat a nose for second by Dominant Dancer. In the Oak Leaf she broke through the starting gate and that affected her race.

“Then, in the Breeders’ Cup, she was jumping puddles, raced wide and still got beat by about six lengths,” Jumps added. ‘And Stella Madrid beat her by only 3 1/2 lengths.”

Stella Madrid, the East Coast ace who entered the Starlet with a chance to be division champion, was favored at 3-2. Her stablemate, Special Happening, was second choice at 4-1.

At the break, longshot Dramatic Joy shot to the lead under pressure from Special Happening. Those two cut out a moderately fast pace while being followed closely by Stella Madrid on the rail, Tasteful T.V. between horses and Icy Folly on the outside.

Angel Cordero, fresh from a cutting horse competition in Texas, was happy with his position on Stella Madrid. However, he was not pleased with the way she was running.

“After about a half-mile I had to chirp to her to keep her going,” Cordero said. “But she came up empty.

“I don’t know what it was. She ran her race in the Breeders’ Cup (she was third), but she just didn’t fire today.”

As Stella Madrid retreated through the pack--she ended up seventh, beaten 15 lengths--Solis was putting Cheval Volant into a drive on the far outside. Dramatic Joy and Special Happening were still on the lead, but it was clear they would have their hands full once the field straightened into the stretch.

Special Happening, who had finished a length in front of Cheval Volant in the Breeders’ Cup, was still running hard at the eighth pole. But Chris McCarron, her rider, said she had little response when Solis and his filly came alongside.

“My filly didn’t get tired,” McCarron said. “She just got outrun.”

Inside the final furlong, Cheval Volant appeared to have the race in total control. Then, from far back, the 37-1 shot Annual Reunion launched a powerful finish to give her fans a thrill.

“I was following Alex’s filly around the turn,” said Gary Boulanger, who rode Annual Reunion. “I knew my filly liked to run on the outside, but she just couldn’t stay with the winner.”

Cheval Volant’s final time of 1:35 3/5 was the second fastest of the five Starlets run at one-mile. The record belongs to Stocks Up.

Solis rode Cheval Volant in her third-place Del Mar Debutante but lost the mount to Pat Valenzuela in the Oak Leaf Stakes. Much was made of the fact that Valenzuela lost the mount on Sunday Silence in the Breeders’ Cup Classic when he tested positive for cocaine and was suspended for 60 days. He also lost the mount on Cheval Volant, even though she was 70-1 in her Breeders’ Cup race and failed to bring back part of the purse.

Shapiro looks back on the Breeders’ Cup without regrets.

“She didn’t earn a dime, and yet we felt like winners because of how well she ran under the circumstances,” said Shapiro, who owns 60% of the Starlet winner.

Shapiro, whose PWC Corp. is parent company of the Laundryland chain of cleaners, has been in the racing business for two years.

“But I’ve been following the horses for 20 years,” he said. “I’m interested in them as athletes. And I finally decided to get involved in order to live the dream.”

For Jumps, the Starlet marked his first Grade I victory. A former veterinary student, he also was in charge of yearling preparation for bloodstock agent Albert Yank before taking out his trainer’s license.

“The public tends to overlook our horses,” said Jumps, who has 20 horses in his Hollywood stable. “But that’s all right with us. It’ show they run that counts.”

Jumps, who picked out Cheval Volant from this year’s Florida sale of 2-year-olds, has always had a high rate of in-the-money performers. His closest previous brush with an upset of Starlet proportions came in the 1987 San Pasqual Handicap at Santa Anita Park, when longshot Ascension finished second to the Charlie Whittingham-trained Epidaurus.

Jumps was asked about the immediate future for Cheval Volant.

“I think we’ll let this race sink in first,” he replied. “On thing is for sure--I don’t think we’ll see her at odds of 25-1 again.

“And no, I didn’t bet,” Jumps added with a grin. “Having a shot at a half-million dollar purse was enough to think about.”

Dominant Dancer, the morning line second choice in the Starlet, failed to pass a routine veterinary inspection on the morning of the race and was scratched by the stewards.

The daughter of Moscow Ballet had beaten Cheval Volant in all three of their encounters, including the Landaluce Stakes at Hollywood Park last July when they ran 1-2.

Dr. Donald Dooley, representing the California Horse Racing Board, pronounced Dominant Dancer “unsound” after watching her both walk and jog outside the stable of trainer Don Harper Sunday morning at 7:30.

“It’s a pass-fail situation,” Dooley said later. “She simply was not tracking evenly. It’s not my job to diagnose problems, only to determine if a horse appears racing sound. In this case it was a pretty easy call.”

Dominant Dancer had a history of shin soreness dating at least to the days after her victory in the Oak Leaf Stakes at Santa Anita Oct. 9. After that race, both Harper and co-owner Jamie Schloss indicated the filly would require a period of rest before running again.

But Dominant Dancer was working again in less than three weeks. Leading up to the Starlet, she showed a consistent exercise pattern of uniformly fast moves in the morning.

Schloss, who also bred Dominant Dancer with two partners, was disappointed that his filly did not pass muster.

“She has been showing some soreness in that shin,” Schloss said when reached at home Sunday. “I’m afraid that last work may have aggravated it more than we thought. We just ran out of time.

“We’d certainly never do anything to harm her, but I’m convinced she could have won the Starlet anyway,” Scholss said. “What happened could have been for the best. Now she’ll get the rest she needs, and I guarantee she’ll be back as a 3-year-old.”

In what was certainly the best $40,000 field of the season, Olympic Prospect defeated Sunny Blossom by 1 1/4 lengths by covering six furlongs in 1:08 2/5 in Sunday’s seventh race. Ruhlmann, making his first start since July, finished fourth.

“That was the race he was ready to run in the Breeders’ Cup,” said Olympic Prospect’s trainer, John Sadler, who watched a rain squall ruin his chances in Florida. “As far as we’re concerned, he’s still king of the hill around here.”