Criminal Type Looms Against Sunday Silence : Horse racing: Late-blooming son of Alydar is expected to be main threat to ’89 horse of the year in Gold Cup.

Where’s Easy Goer?

That’s the question trainer Wayne Lukas is semi-seriously asking as he sends out Criminal Type today to run against a field that’s already loaded in the $1-million Hollywood Gold Cup.

Sunday Silence, the 1989 horse of the year; stablemate Ruhlmann, this year’s Santa Anita Handicap winner; and Opening Verse, who has won three of his last four starts, are enough opposition for any horse, without including a runner of Easy Goer’s caliber.

Still, Lukas wonders why the colt that Criminal Type beat in the recent Metropolitan Handicap at Belmont Park didn’t cross the country, as his horse did, to run in the 51st Gold Cup, which has drawn seven starters.

“This is a million-dollar race, you’ve got a chance to beat last year’s champion and it fits into Easy Goer’s schedule,” Lukas said of the 1 1/4-mile event. “He ought to be here. They say hampionships are won in the fall, but the horse who wins this race gets a leg up on what’s to come.”

Belmont Stakes winner Easy Goer ran third in the Metropolitan, his second start since those second-place finishes to Sunday Silence in last year’s Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Breeders’ Cup Classic. Easy Goer’s next race is to be the Suburban Handicap at Belmont July 4.

“Easy Goer will win the Suburban against not much of a field, and then about 400 guys back there will start writing again that he’s the greatest horse in the world,” Lukas said, referring to the New York media.

Lukas is not really surprised that Easy Goer isn’t running in the Gold Cup. Ogden Phipps is a New Yorker, and his horses seldom leave their home grounds. All 13 of Easy Goer’s victories have come in New York, and four of his six losses have come outside the state.

Actually, Lukas had to persuade J. T. Lundy, who manages Calumet Farm’s racing interests, that the already well-traveled Criminal Type ought to leave New York and run in the Gold Cup.

“It took some salesmanship,” Lukas said.

Criminal Type, with eight victories, five seconds and three thirds in 21 races and earnings of $1.6 million, has been on the move since his 2-year-old season, which was spent without much success in France in 1987.

Criminal Type left France toward the end of 1988 after winning one of five starts at four different tracks. Last year, under Lukas for the first time, the son of Alydar and Klepto, a No Robbery mare, went two for eight, never showing enough ability to leave the allowance ranks. This season, however, he has won five of eight starts, with two seconds, and today he could win his second $1-million race in six weeks. He won the Pimlico Special by a neck over Ruhlmann on May 12.

Criminal Type turned a corner at Lukas’ Hollywood Park barn the other morning, on his way down the shed row for a reshoeing date with a blacksmith.

Lukas beamed at the horse’s condition, but then cast a qualifying doubt about how Criminal Type will perform in the Gold Cup.

“He looks like he’s ready to run another big race,” Lukas said. “The one thing is, horses going from East to West don’t always run as well as the horses traveling from West to East. I don’t know why this is, but it’s so. And it’s something that nags at you going into this race.”

Otherwise, the conditions look right for Criminal Type. He has the tactical speed that will enable his jockey, Jose Santos, to place him just off Ruhlmann, who will supply the pace for his stablemate, Sunday Silence, and is capable of running away with the race, as he did in the Santa Anita Handicap, if no one gets chummy with him.

Eual Wyatt, Hollywood Park’s racing secretary, was kind to Sunday Silence, not adding any weight to the 126 pounds he carried while winning the Californian in his last start. Criminal Type, who because of his slow start has never had to carry much weight, has been assigned 121 pounds, a pound more than he shouldered in the Metropolitan.

“Criminal Type showed me something,” said Bob Levy, after his Housebuster lost the Metropolitan by a neck. “He’s a real tough horse. We led all the way and had the lead by a length or two with an eighth of a mile to go, but we just couldn’t put him away.”

After the Gold Cup, Lukas plans to send Criminal Type to another major race, the Arlington Challenge Cup in the Chicago suburbs on Aug. 4. If both Easy Goer and Sunday Silence are entered, Arlington International Racecourse will put up a $1-million purse.

“If it’s not a million, maybe we won’t go,” Lukas said. “I hear they’re running the Whitney at Saratoga the same day, and you know how those guys (the Phipps family) are. They don’t go out of New York very much.”

GOLD CUP FIELD

Post Position Weight 1. Stylish Winner 113 2. Criminal Type 121 3. Santangelo 110 4. Sunday Silence * 126 5. Ruhlmann * 124 6. Mi Selecto 114 7. Opening Verse 119

* Sunday Silence and Ruhlmann are a Charlie Whittingham-trained entry.