HORSE RACING : Some Races Still Being Contested

In California, this will be known as the year of the race that did not end at the finish line.

The result of the Del Mar Derby, run in mid-August, is in the hands of the California Horse Racing Board and may yet land in the courts. The Final Fourteen, a new stake, was run at Bay Meadows a month ago, and lawyers from San Francisco to Houston are lining up to argue about which horse deserves the $125,000 winner’s purse.

Today in San Mateo, Ricky Frazier, the jockey who started the Final Fourteen with 126 pounds and came back about two minutes later weighing only 123 1/2, will try to explain the discrepancy to Bay Meadows’ stewards. Crash dieters hope to learn something from the testimony.

If a lead pad, which burdens a horse if the jockey himself isn’t heavy enough to reach the assigned weight, got away from Frazier sometime during the running of the Final Fourteen, it will not have been a racing first.

Two years before the Tanforan race track in San Bruno was destroyed by fire in 1964, Tommy Nakagawa went out to ride with 113 pounds and returned weighing considerably less. His horse was disqualified. Charlie Dougherty, the clerk of scales that day, was one of the stewards who officiated the Final Fourteen.

Charlie Burr, the Chicago jockey who won 310 races in 1951 to lead the country, actually had a reputation for being underweight after races. After numerous violations, Burr was summoned by the Illinois Racing Board, which was considering a lifetime ban. Bill Miller, a member of the board, was also a horse owner for whom Burr frequently rode. This patent conflict of interest might have been taboo elsewhere, and probably can only be explained by saying that it was Chicago.

Miller prevailed upon his fellow board members to give Burr a reprieve, and they fined him $2,500. “From what I heard, Charlie never paid a nickel,” said Keene Daingerfield, the retired steward.

Daingerfield was in the stewards’ stand at Atlantic City in 1965 when Summer Scandal, the good filly, was involved in a disqualification because of a jockey’s post-race weight difference. “That was the worst mistake I ever made in my life,” Daingerfield said. “The ‘official’ sign was put up before the jockeys weighed in--after the race. When we found out about the weight (the winner carried), I had them take the ‘official’ sign down. I shouldn’t have done it, because once the public sees ‘official,’ the race should be official. I was following the rule (about weighing in), but my timing was bad.”

One year at Monmouth Park, jockey Paul Kallai’s mount beat a horse ridden by Steve Brooks, after a lead pad of Kallai’s popped out with a quarter-mile to run.

Of all people, the rider who was ponying Brooks’ horse spotted the pad lying on the track, retrieved it and unwittingly gave it to Kallai before he stepped on the scale. Kallai registered the proper weight then, even though he had carried a pound or two less in the stretch run.

Brooks had seen Kallai lose his pad. The stewards didn’t hear about the incident until the next day, when one of them said to Brooks: “How come you didn’t claim foul?”

Brooks said: “I didn’t think I’d need to. I thought you’d catch Kallai when he got on the scale.”

Allijeba was the horse Ricky Frazier rode in the Final Fourteen as they finished a nose in front of Tex’s Zing. Allijeba’s owner has appealed his horse’s disqualification to the racing board.

On Saturday, at Hawthorne Park in suburban Chicago, Allijeba and Tex’s Zing are entered in the $150,000 Robert F. Carey Memorial Handicap. Owners, trainers and jockeys of both horses are hoping for a race that is decided at the finish line.

No one can convince trainer Gary Jones that his Quiet American wouldn’t have won the Breeders’ Cup Classic, based on the way the colt ran at Aqueduct a week later when he took the New York Racing Assn. Mile in a blazing time of 1:32 4/5. That was three-fifths of a second off the world record set by Dr. Fager in 1968.

Quiet American couldn’t get in the Classic, even though he had run second to Dispersal, the morning-line Classic favorite, in the Woodward Handicap at Belmont Park on Sept. 15. Hoping for a scratch that never materialized, Jones still entered Quiet American in the Classic, and the Belmont oddsmaker made him a respectable 8-1.

A point system, based on high finishes in important races, determines the first nine starters when a Breeders’ Cup race has an overflow pre-entry list. The final five spots are determined by a panel of international racing officials.

Jones believes the selection committee should also pay attention to points that horses have earned. “A defending champion, someone like (1989 Classic winner) Sunday Silence, deserves the chance to win the race again, and that should be why the committee exists,” Jones said. “But otherwise, if points are used to determine the first nine horses, why shouldn’t they have something to do with the other five?”

Of the five committee-selected horses that ran in the Classic, none had more points than Quiet American. Two of the five ran strong races, Ibn Bey finishing second to Unbridled in his first start on dirt, and Lively One running fourth, just two lengths behind. Lively One might have won the race with better racing luck. All of this meant little to Jones, though; he was confident that Quiet American would have outfinished them all.

Horse Racing Notes

Plenty of Grace, winner of the Yellow Ribbon Stakes at Santa Anita last Sunday, has been flown to New York, but her trainer, John Veitch, is considering a return to California for the Matriarch at Hollywood Park on Dec. 2. The Eclipse Award for best grass female is still up for grabs. . . . Television ratings for the Breeders’ Cup were the lowest in the seven-year history of the series, which, compared to other sports, has never had a large TV audience.