OAK TREE : Mandella Is Shooting for a Double

Four of the first six trainers in the national money standings are California-based, and three of them are familiar names throughout the country: Wayne Lukas, who is a cinch to win his eighth consecutive title; Charlie Whittingham, who has finished first seven times, and Ron McAnally, an Eclipse Award winner.

Richard Mandella, the other Californian in the top six, is well-known locally, and worked for a couple of years as an assistant trainer in New York, but away from the West Coast he would turn few headwaiters’ heads.

That could be changing. Mandella, who will turn 40 next month, has saddled horses that have earned more than $3.1 million, and even better days could be ahead. Today, he’s in Lexington, Ky., to run Leger Cat in the $175,000 Keeneland Breeders’ Cup Stakes; Sunday at Santa Anita’s Oak Tree meeting, Mandella’s Reluctant Guest is the highweight at 121 pounds in the $150,000 Las Palmas Handicap.

Mandella’s barn has all the momentum it needs. At the end of Del Mar, his horses won five consecutive races to gain him a tie with Lukas and Bill Spawr for the training title. Since the opening of Oak Tree, Mandella’s Exclusive Partner has tied the world record for 1 1/8 miles on grass with a time of 1:44 4/5, and his Corwyn Bay has earned a berth in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, two weeks from today at Belmont Park, with a victory in the Ancient Title Handicap.

Reluctant Guest is a candidate for the Eclipse Award as best grass female, having won the Beverly D. at Arlington International and the Wilshire and Beverly Hills handicaps at Hollywood Park. The late-running 4-year-old filly has drawn only four opponents in the 1 1/8-mile race Sunday--Tessia, Double Wedge, Royal Touch and Little Brianne.

Mandella can identify with the Sprint, even though none of his three Breeders’ Cup starters have run in that stake. In 1986, Mandella was training Phone Trick, one of the fastest horses in the country. Phone Trick had won all six starts the year before, and he extended the streak to nine with a victory at Santa Anita and two more in New York.

Phone Trick’s first loss, a second-place finish to Groovy in the Tom Fool at Belmont Park that July, was also his last race. Injured, he missed the Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita, and the Sprint was won by Smile, who had been beaten by Phone Trick earlier in the year.

Smile’s total was three stakes victories, the same as Phone Trick’s, but the Eclipse Awards voters, as they frequently do in this division, gave the title to the Breeders’ Cup winner.

With Phone Trick accounting for about 15% of the total, Mandella’s barn earned $1.6 million that year, ranking 34th nationally. Mandella’s horses will more than double the ’86 purse total this year, and a victory in the Sprint might erase the memory of what the race did to him then.

Horse Racing Notes

Unless Ruhlmann or Lively One emerges from today’s Goodwood Handicap at Santa Anita as a likely contender, trainer Charlie Whittingham will have only one starter, Golden Pheasant, in the Breeders’ Cup. Golden Pheasant will run in the Turf Stakes. Whittingham, who has won Breeders’ Cup races with Sunday Silence and Ferdinand, has been in the Breeders’ Cup every year since it began in 1984, running nine horses in 1987. The last time the Breeders’ Cup was held in New York, at Aqueduct in 1985, he ran only one horse, finishing seventh with Greinton in the Turf.

Gorgeous, who couldn’t beat Bayakoa in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Distaff and has lost two of three meetings to her this year, will again try to beat her at Belmont. . . . Best Pal, headed for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, bit his tongue in the post parade before winning the Norfolk Stakes last Sunday, which explains why he bled from the mouth.