FRISKY BUSINESS : Mister Frisky, the Santa Anita Derby Favorite, Has Come a Long Way, but Must Prove He Is Not Mere Sprinter

When Mister Frisky, the favorite for Saturday’s Santa Anita Derby, was led into an auction ring in Ocala, Fla., a year ago Thursday, his consignor, Ronald Chak, was hoping that the unraced 2-year-old colt might bring $10,000.

Mister Frisky’s sire, Marsayas, was one of the most unpopular stallions standing in Florida, so unpopular that his owner, Myron Rosenthal of Chicago, had moved him to his farm near Lexington, Ky., in 1987.

“I wasn’t sorry to see Marsayas leave,” said Chak, a veterinarian who owns Newchance Farm, one of numerous struggling horse nurseries in the once-thriving Ocala area. “We had been able to breed him to only a few mares. We started him out (in 1983) at a $2,500 stud fee, and gradually dropped it to $1,000, and there were still hardly any takers.”

Marsayas himself was well-bred, having been sired by Damascus, the horse of the year in 1967. Marsayas was powerfully built in front, a horse who looked as if he would be a strong sprinter, but he suffered a back injury in his stall and went lame when he got some gravel embedded in his foot. He was retired with a record of two victories and $20,700 in purses.

As a stallion, Marsayas begot neither quantity nor quality. His first four crops consisted of 21 foals. Many stallions produce that many in one season.

“Many of his foals had pasterns (ankles) that were long and low,” Chak said. “They had glaring conformation faults.”

But Mister Frisky was the exception, so Chak was hopeful. “This was a gorgeous colt,” Chak said. “Not like the others.”

A couple from Puerto Rico attended that Ocala sale about a year ago. Jose Fernandez, a construction engineer, had been in racing for 20 years and he and his wife, Marta, a chemist, had been buying low-priced horses at American auctions for three years. A couple of hours before they bought Mister Frisky, they paid $18,000 for a colt, which Marta says is the most they ever have spent for a horse.

The Fernandezes had seen Mister Frisky breeze a quarter of a mile the week of the sale, they liked his appearance and Marta, who is adept at reading a catalogue, approved of the breeding. Frisky Flyer, Mister Frisky’s dam, won less than $20,000 on the track and produced four previous foals who didn’t turn out to be anything.

“That’s kind of funny, that they would have liked his workout,” Chak said. “Because we had six horses in the sale, and he wasn’t the fastest. We worked another set of horses who were faster than he was.”

Jose Fernandez planned to bid as much as $21,000 for Mister Frisky.

“But you know how it is,” Fernandez said. “When you like a horse, there is no telling how much you will pay in order to get him.”

They were able to buy Mister Frisky for $15,000, so Chak was happy and the buyers were happy and now the buyers are really happy. The purchase of this small, sinewy chestnut occurred 15 victories, three track records and one Puerto Rican horse-of-the-year championship ago, and now undefeated Mister Frisky is a moderate favorite to give California, which dominated the Kentucky Derby during the 1980s, another victory when Churchill Downs has the 116th running of the race May 5.

Mister Frisky, who has won races 14 and 15 at Santa Anita after going 13 for 13 in Puerto Rico, will use the Santa Anita Derby as his final prep for the Kentucky Derby. With 16 races on his record, Mister Frisky will probably be the most-raced horse at Churchill Downs.

And the most talked about. Mister Frisky’s trainer since he arrived at Santa Anita in January has been Laz Barrera, who at 65--he will turn 66 three days after the Derby--has designs on his third victory at Churchill Downs.

Barrera keeps saying that Mister Frisky’s tranquil personality is like Affirmed’s. That horse won the 1978 Derby and is the last to have won the Triple Crown, which also includes the Preakness and the Belmont.

But the more obvious comparison is to Bold Forbes, who in 1976 gave Barrera his first Derby victory. Both horses were bought cheaply--Bold Forbes was a $15,200 yearling--both began their careers in Puerto Rico and Mister Frisky, like Bold Forbes, appears to be a miler who will try to carry his front-running style the 1 1/4-mile Derby distance.

“Any horse with speed is dangerous,” Barrera said after Mister Frisky had won the San Rafael Stakes at a mile March 3 with another wire-to-wire performance.

Barrera could have been talking 14 years ago, when he and Angel Cordero, with a cunning ride, gave the Derby one of its rare wire-to-wire winners. Since Bold Forbes upset Honest Pleasure, the Derby’s shortest-priced favorite in 18 years, only two horses--Spend a Buck in 1985 and the filly Winning Colors in 1988--have won the race on the front end.

Until Mister Frisky, Bold Forbes was the last 2-year-old to win Puerto Rico’s horse-of-the-year title. Bold Forbes held the island’s record for six furlongs until Mister Frisky ran 1:09 2/5--1 1/5 seconds faster--in a race in December. Mister Frisky also broke Puerto Rico’s seven-furlong record twice.

In September, in his fifth race and first start in a stake, Mister Frisky won by 9 1/2 lengths going six furlongs and his Puerto Rican trainer, Juan Rodriguez, told Jose and Marta Fernandez that the horse should eventually be shipped to the United States.

Barrera was going to get the horse here because of the recommendation of Enrique Ubarri, the owner-breeder who also was the Barrera connection for Bold Forbes. When Barrera first saw Mister Frisky run, his winning streak had reached nine and he was trying 1 1/16 miles for the second time. Mister Frisky won by three lengths and Barrera said he was a “machine.”

Mister Frisky left Puerto Rico with much fanfare, 2,000 people seeing him off. For most of his races there, the crowds were not much larger.

He arrived at Santa Anita with no hoopla.

“For three weeks, nobody even knew he was here,” Barrera said.

Some trainers of other 3-year-olds at Santa Anita still question Mister Frisky’s ability to go beyond a mile if he gets pressured.

But Gary Jones thinks otherwise. “I think he’s the genuine article,” Jones said.

Another trainer, John Sadler, likes Mister Frisky, but says this is the kind of year a longshot could win the Derby.

“Mister Frisky is a professional race horse,” Sadler said. “He’s very steady. But I have a hunch someone might come out of the woodwork and win the Derby. It might be a Gato Del Sol-type year.”

In 1982, Gato Del Sol, a 21-1 shot, won the Derby.

Stumbling out of the gate in the seven-furlong San Vicente at Santa Anita Feb. 10, Mister Frisky didn’t take the lead for the first time in his career, but came from the middle of the field to win by a length.

“I think he can run all day long,” said Gary Stevens, winner of the Derby with the front-running Winning Colors and Mister Frisky’s jockey in both of his American races. “The farther the better. As long as a horse hasn’t tried something yet, you can’t say he can’t do it. The pedigree experts say he should be able to run long. That’s not my area of expertise, but I’ll go along with them until he shows otherwise.”

Several days before the San Rafael, Mister Frisky worked five furlongs in :59 2/5.

“The track was dead, so that time was super,” Barrera said. “And he did the last eighth of a mile in 11 seconds. That’s the sign of a very good horse.

“This is a little horse. He probably doesn’t weigh 1,000 pounds. But he’s all muscle. There’s no fat. When they put the tack on him, his muscles come out and it looks like he grows about seven inches.”

Barrera has personal reasons for returning to Churchill Downs. He has been elected to three racing halls of fame--in his native Cuba, Mexico and the U.S.--and he won four consecutive Eclipse Awards in the 1970s, but a Derby victory would be like the victory aboard Ferdinand that rescued Bill Shoemaker from semi-oblivion in 1986.

Barrera has had heart surgery twice, and his pride was punctured in recent years when Dolly Green and Aaron Jones, two major clients, sent their horses to other trainers.

“I was with Aaron for 15 years,” Barrera said. “We won two (division) championships, with Lemhi Gold and Tiffany Lass. He told me that he wanted a private trainer.”

The Green and Jones setbacks were minor, however, compared to what happened last year, when Wayne Lukas, Barrera and four other local trainers were accused of running horses in California that tested positive for cocaine. All of the cases have been dropped, an embarrassment for state racing authorities, but Barrera feels that he was publicly humiliated. Albert Barrera, one of his sons, was another of the implicated trainers.

“I lost 30 pounds worrying,” Barrera said. “All over the world, people were talking about me. Did I ever think about just retiring? No, but I thought about dying.”

Barrera is suing the state’s testing laboratory for $25 million.

Since Affirmed, Barrera has started only one horse in the Derby, finishing 10th with Dolly Green’s Paris Prince in 1983.

“I have a good horse this year, but now I got to get lucky,” Barrera said. “It takes some luck to get a horse to the Derby.”

In 1976, it also took some savvy. Bold Forbes suffered from sore shins when the winter began at Santa Anita, and later he had a cracked-hoof problem. Until he won the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct, two weeks before the Derby, the colt had never run farther than a mile.

Bold Forbes not only won at 1 1/4 miles, he won the 1 1/2-mile Belmont five weeks later. In between, in the Preakness, he rapped himself in a hind leg and came back bleeding after a third-place finish.

Mister Frisky might not be an echo of Bold Forbes, but his two victories at Santa Anita have revived the stud career of Marsayas, who now stands at Glencoe Farm in Lexington, Ky.

Orliss Huff, the manager of Glencoe, is getting offers of $5,000 for one of Marsayas’ live foals.