BREEDERS’ CUP : If Undefeated Meadow Star Finishes First Again, Charity Is Big Winner

If Meadow Star, the undefeated 2-year-old filly, wins her Breeders’ Cup race at Belmont Park Saturday, the monetary winners as usual would be her jockey, her trainer and the bettors who supported her.

But the biggest winner of all would be the Children’s Rescue Fund, which provides assistance for abused and homeless children. Carl Icahn already is a winner, just for a promise.

Icahn, the TWA chairman, owns Meadow Star, and a week ago he announced that his share of all the filly’s future earnings will be donated to the fund. This could be a substantial windfall for the charity that Icahn founded, since the winner’s cut of the $1-million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies is $450,000, minus 10% apiece for the trainer and the jockey.

There have been previous instances of horse owners donating money to charities, but veteran racing officials cannot recall a proposition as potentially beneficial as Icahn’s. Meadow Star has won six consecutive races, all of them by comfortable margins, and at 3-5 on the morning line she is the heaviest favorite for the seven Breeders’ Cup races.

A victory Saturday would also make Meadow Star one of the favorites for next year’s Kentucky Derby, and although only three fillies have won that race, one of them--Genuine Risk--was trained by Le Roy Jolley, and he says he plans to nominate Icahn’s horse for the 1991 Triple Crown races.

“I was down at Laurel (in Maryland) for some races last weekend,” Jolley said. “And the reaction to Mr. Icahn’s offer of the Meadow Star purses struck a very warm chord among racing people and fans there. Many people I had never met came up to me and wished me luck. It was a unique experience.”

Icahn, 54, grew up in New York, in the borough of Queens. The son of a lawyer and a schoolteacher, he was not underprivileged. After graduating from Princeton, he dropped out of medical school because he was more interested in corporate affairs. His philanthropic interests are widespread: He belongs to hospital and library boards, does work for the blind and founded a program for the prevention of child abuse at New York Hospital. The Children’s Rescue Fund builds houses, provides social service programs and helps mothers with drug problems.

“You can see some strange things happening if you take a look around,” Icahn said. “You can see kids hungry and struggling at one end of the street, and then at the other end you can see people doing well and throwing parties. This program (the children’s fund) is designed for the end of the street that’s doing poorly.”

Icahn came into racing in 1985, immediately spending millions of dollars on broodmares, and he boards more than 40 mares at two farms in Central Kentucky. He was a partner with Peter Brant in the ownership of Gulch, who won the Breeders’ Cup Sprint in 1988, and last year, Icahn’s Rose’s Cantina was fourth in the Distaff.

Brant, who this year received a three-month prison sentence over tax irregularities, took his horses away from Jolley in 1988 and sent them to Wayne Lukas, who saddled Gulch for his winning Breeders’ Cup race. Icahn, however, didn’t sever his racing relationship with Jolley, and after Meadow Star, a daughter of Meadowlake and Inreality Star, was bought for $90,000 at a yearling auction, she was sent to the trainer who won the Kentucky Derby with Foolish Pleasure in 1975 and Genuine Risk in 1980.

Meadow Star made her debut at Belmont in June, winning by more than five lengths in a five-furlong clocking of :58 4/5. Since then, she has five stakes victories, the most recent on Oct. 6 at Belmont, where she ran as far as a mile for the first time and won the Frizette by 14 lengths. The Breeders’ Cup race is only one-sixteenth of a mile farther.

“The way she’s running, next year she will beat the colts,” said Jose Santos, who rides Meadow Star.

Champagne Glow was second in the Frizette and is running in the Breeders’ Cup, but her trainer, Joe Pierce, has no delusions. “Our filly is a nice filly,” he said after the Frizette, “but we’ll be running for second in the Breeders’ Cup.”

In comparing Meadow Star with Genuine Risk, Jolley suggests that there’s no comparison. “This filly (Meadow Star) is stronger physically and more durable,” Jolley said. “Genuine Risk was more delicate, and she gave so much of herself every race that you had to be protective of her. Meadow Star has a great mentality, a great positive attitude. I think she would run the same no matter who she ran against.”

If Go for Wand beats Bayakoa in Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Distaff, she would probably thrust herself into a two-way battle with Criminal Type for horse-of-the-year honors. Criminal Type’s season, and probably his career, is over because of an ankle injury.

However, if Go for Wand doesn’t win, and Meadow Star does, Jolley’s filly would also become a horse-of-the-year candidate. When Secretariat was a 2-year-old in 1972, he was voted horse of the year, but it’s been much longer since a 2-year-old filly took the national championship. Moccasin, the only one, shared the award with Roman Brother in 1965.

Icahn’s charity cannot benefit from the voting, since the horse-of-the-year title is not a monetary award.

Horse Racing Notes

Besides donating Meadow Star’s purse money, Carl Icahn said he will also match any contributions that are made to the Children’s Rescue Fund in the filly’s name. . . . Rambling Willie, the pacer in retirement at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Ky., earned $2 million, and his ownership contributed 10% of the purses to a church in West Mansfield, Ohio.

Trainer Le Roy Jolley has won with one of 12 Breeders’ Cup starters, Manila taking the Turf in 1986. Jose Santos rode Manila. Gulch was sixth and seventh under Jolley in the Breeders’ Cup before he won the Sprint for Wayne Lukas. . . . Don LaPlace, the Belmont Park handicapper who made the morning lines for the Breeders’ Cup, said he never had a stakes favorite as high as 4-1 until he hung that price on Dispersal in the $3-million Classic.

Jockey Craig Perret, who won the Juvenile last year with Rhythm, said the same colt, who is running in the Classic, gives him the best chance Saturday for another Breeders’ Cup victory.