SANTA ANITA : Tiny Mite Apollo Records Another Easy Victory in Near-Record Time

The smallest horse in trainer Gary Jones’ barn continues to belie his size on the race track. Apollo, winner of his first two starts, won again Friday, running six furlongs in a near-record 1:08 3/5 to take the $79,800 San Miguel Stakes by 4 1/2 lengths at Santa Anita.

Without any reminders from jockey Chris McCarron’s whip, Apollo missed the stakes record, set by MacArthur Park in 1972, by a fifth of a second.

Standing at a little more than 15 hands (five feet), Apollo doesn’t have a very large stride. If he were a baseball pitcher, scouts would call the 2-year-old Falstaff-Tumble Along colt sneaky fast.

“He ran much faster than he felt,” McCarron said. “He deceived me. He was so much within himself that it was pathetic. All I did was shake the stick at him.”

Jones doesn’t think Apollo will get much bigger. “I don’t care how big he is,” the trainer said, “as long as he gives me enough (winners’ circle) pictures.”

Bill Shoemaker, who saddled Intimate Kid in the San Miguel, saw Jones in the barn area Friday morning. “Your horse won’t be ahead of mine down the backstretch,” Shoemaker said.

Intimate Kid tried to run with Apollo through early fractions of 21 2/5 and 44 1/5, but couldn’t head him. “The other horse kept going, and mine stopped,” said Eddie Delahoussaye, who rode Intimate Kid.

Roman Envoy, a minor stakes winner at Arlington International in Arlington Heights, Ill., finished second, 3 1/2 lengths ahead of Formal Dinner, who failed to win for the fifth time since taking the Sanford at Saratoga on Aug. 15. Intimate Kid wound up fourth, and Sondeed was last in the five-horse field.

Apollo, earning $46,050 for Harold and Diane Keith and Leon Rasmussen, his breeders and owners, paid $2.60. After Apollo shook off Intimate Kid at the top of the stretch, the only race left was for second place.

Rasmussen, a bloodlines expert who worked 50 years for the Daily Racing Form, gives Apollo a chance to stretch out and eventually run the 1 1/4 miles of the Kentucky Derby, but Jones remains skeptical.

“On paper, they’re telling me this horse can get the Derby distance, but I’ve got to see it to believe it,” said Jones, who plans to run Apollo in the seven-furlong California Breeders’ Champion Stakes on Jan. 27.

Kent Desormeaux, who rode Apollo to his first two victories, is sitting out a weeklong suspension, and McCarron replaced him Friday. McCarron had been aboard Apollo once for a workout at Hollywood Park. Jones said Desormeaux would regain the mount.

After taking the Hollywood Park riding title, McCarron won three races on opening day at Santa Anita and added three more Friday. Many horsemen thought that he had come back too soon in August, two months after suffering broken legs and a broken arm in a spill at Hollywood. McCarron still has a steel rod, the diameter of about a penny, in his left leg, but he says there’s no lingering soreness or pain.

When McCarron was injured, he was running second to Gary Stevens in the national money standings. Despite all the riding he missed, McCarron is still likely to finish eighth in purses this year.

Apollo, who has the same name as the 1882 Kentucky Derby winner, is a mount that McCarron will be sorry to lose. “He’s as quick a horse as any that I’ve ridden,” he said after the San Miguel. “I asked him through the lane, because he was gawking. The good thing about the race is that I never told him to run, I just asked him. He was doing it easily.”

In 1983, the Keiths and Rasmussen campaigned another precocious horse. His name was Secret, a son of Secretariat.

“He was very talented,” Rasmussen said. “But some place along the line, he lost his courage. He ran in the race after Bates Motel won the Santa Anita Handicap that year. I don’t know what happened, but he was never any good after that.”

Laffit Pincay, who turns 44 today, rode two winners earlier Friday and was aboard Roman Envoy in the San Miguel. “I had a lot of horse coming down the stretch, and Apollo just pulled away from me,” he said.

Besides his speed, Jones likes Apollo’s temperament. “He’s got the right mind,” Jones said. “The second time we worked him, before he ever raced, I knew he was going to be a runner. He had a shin problem that slowed him down before he got to the races. He’s got the disposition of an old lead pony.”

That’s the kind of attitude a horse needs in early May, when more than 100,000 fans are jammed into Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Derby. Maybe it’s about time that Louisville had another Apollo win its famous race.

Horse Racing Notes

Jorge Velasquez, whose father-in-law died Thursday, has gone to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic for the funeral and is not expected to ride again at Santa Anita until Tuesday. . . . Nine 3-year-old fillies, including the Wayne Lukas-trained entry of A Wild Ride and Chandelier, are entered for Sunday’s $100,000 La Brea Stakes. The others are She’s a V.P., Mama Simba, Aishah, Mahaska, Nasers Pride, Brought to Mind and Fly Gaelic.

Apollo accounted for a minus show pool of $8,720, which meant that the track had to make up that amount to the bettors. . . . Santa Anita will run the San Gabriel Handicap Monday and the Pasadena Breeders’ Cup Tuesday. The track is dark Wednesday before racing resumes Thursday.