HORSE RACING / JAY HOVDEY : Lundy Is Confident of a Big Season

Richard Lundy is quietly confident that his second full season as trainer of the North American thoroughbreds owned by aerospace tycoon Allen Paulson will be even better than his first. If he’s right, the current Santa Anita meeting will be the launching pad.

Lundy, a native of Mt. Kisco, N.Y., assumed command of the vast Paulson stable in November 1988. After taking stock of his inventory, he decided that an accomplished French-raced 3-year-old named Blushing John could be successfully converted to American-style main-track competition. Score one for Lundy.

Blushing John won four handicaps last year, including the Hollywood Gold Cup and the Pimlico Special, and ended the season by throwing a scare into Sunday Silence and Easy Goer in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Gulfstream Park. The chestnut son of Blushing Groom led to well inside the final furlong and ended up third, beaten by just a length.

As a result, Blushing John is odds-on to be named best older horse Monday when the 1989 Eclipse Awards are announced. After eight years on his own as a trainer, this will be Lundy’s first champion.

“I can’t tell you how gratifying it will be if Blushing John receives the Eclipse,” said the 41-year-old Lundy from his West Coast headquarters at Paulson’s Brookside Farm in Bonsall. “I mapped out a plan before he even ran his first race last year. With only a couple of minor digressions, we stuck to it and it worked.”

Lundy hopes the next Blushing John will be another chestnut 4-year-old who spent his early career in Europe. His name is Opening Verse, a son of Epsom Derby winner The Minstrel, who began life as an $880,000 yearling.

Opening Verse ended up in the thankless role of pacemaker for Sheikh Mohammed’s better English horses, cutting out fast fractions for the likes of Indian Skimmer and Shaadi. The colt was purchased privately by Paulson late last summer.

“I saw him win at York in his last race over there,” Lundy said. “I felt immediately that he could be switched to dirt racing. He had the speed, the stride, the foot, everything you look for in a main-track horse.”

By now, racing fans have heard about Opening Verse’s local debut in a one-mile allowance race last Sunday. His troubled trip has become such a mini-legend, you would think a piano had fallen on him at the eighth pole.

“It was a tough loss,” Lundy said. “I thought he should have won, but those things happen all the time.

“We found out some good things about him, though. Being used as a pacemaker, he spent most of his time on the lead. But he showed me that he doesn’t necessarily need the lead, he doesn’t mind getting dirt in his face, and that he’s an extremely game horse. The plan is to run him right back in the San Fernando.”

The 1 1/8-mile San Fernando Stakes on Jan. 14 is the first Grade I race of the North American season. Music Merci and Prized, both widely accomplished millionaires, will be waiting for the upstart Opening Verse that day.

A victory by Opening Verse in the San Fernando would go a long way toward erasing the bad taste left by events on the same day last year. Paulson’s promising colt Noble Minstrel, competing in a supporting feature that afternoon, broke his shoulder coming down the hillside turf course and had to be destroyed.

Normally a reticent man in public, Paulson was incensed. Noble Minstrel, also by The Minstrel, was his best horse at the time. The owner fired a barrage of criticism at Santa Anita management for the condition of the turf course.

“This course has never been much good, but now it’s the worst in the country,” Paulson said shortly after Noble Minstrel broke down.

One day later, the track suspended all turf racing, resuming it only sporadically through the rest of the meeting. Then, during the off-season, a new course was installed that has met with rave reviews. Lundy, who was devastated by Noble Minstrel’s fatal accident, prefers not to dwell on the past.

“It was a terrible blow at the time,” the trainer said. “There I was, only 60 days in the new position, and we lose what I thought was our best horse. But Santa Anita should be commended on the job they did on the new course. I’m hoping to run quite a few Europeans here this winter.”

Lundy, a protege of Charlie Whittingham, will be spending most of his time with the horses at Brookside Farm, while assistant trainer Alex Hassinger handles their 12-horse string at Santa Anita. Lundy’s hands are full with the development of no less than 60 Paulson 2-year-olds, most of them bred by the owner at his lavish Kentucky farm.

“I’d like to race more in California this year,” said Lundy, who operated out of New York in 1989. “The best thing about racing here is that you can give the horses a break from the racetrack routine by bringing them down here to the farm. Then, when you take them back to the track, they always seem to be a little more pumped up about running again.

Horse Racing Notes

Actor Jack Klugman’s hot streak rubbed off on jockey Frank Olivares in Thursday’s first race when the 40-year-old veteran won with the $32,000 claimer, I Canon I Will. It was the first winner for Olivares since he broke an ankle last September at Fairplex Park. . . . I Canon I Will and her dam, Canon Copy, are four-legged advertisements for Klugman’s major endorsement. Such overt commercialism in horse names is supposedly frowned upon by the Jockey Club, but how can anyone make a fuss when the Triple Crown has been bought by Chrysler and the Epsom Derby hawks EverReady batteries?

After troubled losses with Opening Verse and then favored Samoan Wednesday, the Allen Paulson-Richard Lundy team finally got a clean trip in Thursday’s feature. Unfortunately, Polar Gap was not up to the task and finished last after pressing the pace. . . . After winning Thursday’s seventh race, Heaven for Bid dumped jockey Gary Boulanger while pulling up. The roan filly made a beeline for the winner’s circle and was caught without a fuss.