HOLLYWOOD PARK : Siegel-Mayberry Combination Victory Total Down, but Quality and Paychecks Are Up

The other day at Hollywood Park, while their 3-year-old filly, Conifer, stood in her paddock stall and stared out of funny-looking blinkers, owner Mace Siegel and trainer Brian Mayberry talked with Martin Pedroza, who in a few minutes would ride the horse in the $32,000 claiming race.

“Now, Martin, I hope you don’t mind me telling you something,” Siegel said. “Nobody will complain if you win this race by too big a margin.”

Pedroza, who rides--and wins--a lot of races for the Siegel-Mayberry combination, simply smiled.

“We might win a race,” Siegel said of Conifer, who was the odds-on favorite, “but she’ll probably have a different owner afterward.”

Conifer, who in her only previous races had run unclaimed for $50,000 and $62,500 while finishing second twice at Del Mar last summer, won the Hollywood race. Siegel’s antennae fooled him, though, for no one claimed her, and no one complained to Pedroza about the four-length victory.

“Nobody would want this horse,” Mayberry chortled a little later. “Next time, I might drop her down to $16,000 and run her.”

One race after Conifer’s victory, Pedroza, Siegel and Mayberry were right back in the winner’s circle, thanks to a triumph by Exemplary Star, a 2-year-old colt making his first start and running for a $62,500 claiming price.

The purses for the two races totaled only $44,000. The Siegels--Mace, his wife Jan and their daughter Samantha--and Mayberry quietly peck away financially, and this is the way their large, varied stable has earned more than $400,000 at the current Hollywood meeting. For the year, the Siegel operation has earned more than $1 million, seventh nationally by the Daily Racing Form’s reckoning.

“We’re not winning as many races, but we have a better quality of horse and they’re picking up more paychecks,” said Mace Siegel, a 64-year-old real estate developer. “We’re ahead of last year’s pace.”

Last year, the Siegels won 88 races--11 stakes--and their horses earned about $2 million, 13th in the country.

There’s much more than claiming races to their game, however. Mace Siegel, who has been involved in racing for about 20 years, got serious about the horses he was buying a few years ago, and now he’s capable of spending a million or two on young prospects in a single year.

Many of them come from Florida, where Mayberry, a third-generation trainer, used to work before he was coaxed into coming to California in 1984. J.P. Mayberry, the trainer’s grandfather, saddled Judge Himes, the winner of the Kentucky Derby in 1903.

“I never knew my grandfather, who died young,” Mayberry said. “He was supposed to have trained for a lot of big gamblers. I don’t know if that’s true, exactly, but that’s what they say.”

The most Mayberry has paid for a horse on behalf of the Siegels has been $185,000 for a son of Stop the Music who was incurably slow. He won a race or two, but not enough for Mace Siegel and Mayberry to remember his name readily.

More typical of the Siegel-Mayberry purchases is the $44,000 spent on Stormy But Valid, a 4-year-old filly who gave Mayberry his first major victory and who has earned close to $400,000; and the $47,000 spent on Garden Gal, who will be one of the favorites at Hollywood Saturday in the $100,000 Landaluce for 2-year-old fillies.

Stormy But Valid provided a one-third interest in the Siegels’ greatest day, when three of their horses were shipped in from California last November and swept the preliminary stakes on the Breeders’ Cup program at Gulfstream Park. Records of such accomplishments aren’t kept, but racing historians wonder if the same stable has ever won three consecutive stakes on the same day.

The day before the Breeders’ Cup, another Siegel horse won a stake at Gulfstream.

Mace Siegel likes to buy Florida stock because of bloodline strains, which he feels are advantageous when the horses run at the speed-favoring California tracks.

“Florida has a lot of speed breeding,” Siegel said. “The Mr. Prospectors, horses like that. They’re the kind of horses that match up with the race tracks in California.

“Generally, the Kentucky studs don’t sire the horses that are bred to run in California. Nelson Bunker Hunt had all of those Kentucky-breds that ran out here. They were bred to run all day, but they weren’t the kind of horses that were bred to win consistently in California. Hunt’s horses were bred to run in Europe.”

Siegel has given up on buying Canadian horses, because he believes they don’t bring the necessary competitive edge when they race in the United States. He’s not very active at California sales.

“The decent horses sold in California cost too much money,” Siegel said. “I’m never really comfortable going to the California sales. You don’t have a handle on what’s going on behind the scenes.”

Garden Gal, a daughter of Valid Appeal, is a Florida-bred. In her first race, she barely lasted but held off Long Time Ago, another entrant in the Landaluce, in a quick 1:02 4/5 for 5 1/2 furlongs. That’s the kind of speed Mace Siegel wishes all of his horses would bring with them from Florida.

Horse Racing Notes

The Siegels won the 1988 Landaluce with Distinctive Sis. . . . Saturday’s race drew a field of 11, including the John Mabee-owned entry of Long Time Ago and Alyfair. . . . Gary Jones, who saddled the winning Classic Fame in Wednesday’s American Handicap, has Annual Reunion running Sunday in the $150,000 Hollywood Oaks for 3-year-old fillies. Annual Reunion will be going from grass to dirt, having run second to Materco in the Honeymoon Handicap on June 2.

Although Classic Fame is eligible for the Breeders’ Cup at Belmont Park on Oct. 27, Jones will probably send the Irish import in other directions, because he’s a bleeder who runs on Lasix, a diuretic that’s not permitted in New York. “I think by October, this horse might be able to handle a mile and a half (the distance of the $2-million Breeders’ Cup Turf), but I’d rather not take the chance of running in New York,” Jones said.

Chris McCarron, who suffered broken legs and a broken forearm in a spill at Hollywood Park on June 3, is off crutches and is beginning a therapy program that he hopes will enable him to resume riding by the end of the year. . . . Go and Go, the winner of the Belmont Stakes, doesn’t have any front teeth on the bottom. He was kicked in the chin long before he ever ran a race. . . . The Daily Racing Form has added medication information to its past-performance summaries.