THOROUGHBRED RACING : Sea Cadet Proves to Be a Good ‘Save’

Baseball general managers say that sometimes the best trades are the ones they don’t make. In racing, the best horses can turn out to be the ones that can’t be sold.

Take Sunday Silence. Twice he was sent to auction, as a yearling in Kentucky and as an unraced 2-year-old in California, and when the price never went higher than $32,000, Arthur Hancock kept him.

Had anyone bid as much as $50,000, Hancock would have sold the colt. He did sell half of the horse to his trainer, Charlie Whittingham, for $25,000, and Whittingham turned around and sold half of his half to another client, Ernest Gaillard, for $25,000.

Once Sunday Silence started running, potential buyers were everywhere, but by then there were no sellers. His three-way ownership started him in 14 races; he won nine and finished second five times, earning $4.9 million, the third-highest total ever, behind Alysheba and John Henry. Sunday Silence won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness in 1989, then finished the season with a victory in the Breeders’ Cup Classic and was voted horse of the year. Now Sunday Silence is at stud in Japan, the result of a breeding package that totaled $10 million.

Sea Cadet is no Sunday Silence, and he may never be, but his story is similar. The 3-year-old colt is still running for his owner and co-breeder, Verne Winchell, because he couldn’t be sold once and was saved from being sold at the 11th hour the second time.

In January 1989, Sea Cadet was consigned to a Keeneland yearling sale, where Winchell learned that a horse with hardly any tail isn’t very desirable. Winchell wound up buying the horse back for $2,800.

Fast forward to April 1990 and the sale at Del Mar of 2-year-olds in training. Sea Cadet wasn’t even Sea Cadet yet; he was known in the sales catalogue as hip No. 36, a bay colt by Bolger out of Hattab Gal.

Shortly before the sale, Ron McAnally, who trains for Winchell, got a call from Keith Asmussen, who had broken Sea Cadet at his training center in Texas.

“That horse with the short tail looks pretty good,” Asmussen said. “I think you might want to take him back.”

Hip No. 36 was withdrawn from the sale. Now Sea Cadet has won four of his past five starts, earning $382,050. He bled from the lungs in the only loss during this streak and was treated with Lasix in his past two races, victories in the El Camino Real Derby at Bay Meadows and the San Felipe last Sunday at Santa Anita.

Sea Cadet has vaulted into prominence among the nation’s Kentucky Derby candidates and is one of the horses who will take a shot at Dinard and Best Pal in the Santa Anita Derby on April 6. Luckily for Verne Winchell, Sea Cadet was one that didn’t get away.

Summer Squall, who defeated Unbridled in two of three meetings but still lost the vote for last year’s best 3-year-old colt, is back in training and expected to return to the races next month at Keeneland.

Summer Squall has breezed twice at trainer Neil Howard’s training base in South Carolina and will be shipped to Lexington, Ky., next week. The first two races on his schedule could be the Ben Ali at Keeneland on April 25 and the Pimlico Special on May 11.

Summer Squall won the Jim Beam, the Blue Grass, the Preakness and the Pennsylvania Derby and ran second to Unbridled in the Kentucky Derby, out of seven starts last year, even though his season was compromised by a bleeding problem. Summer Squall passed up the Breeders’ Cup Classic--won by Unbridled--after he bled despite being treated with Lasix for the Meadowlands Cup in October.

Jolie’s Halo, one of the upstarts that Summer Squall and Unbridled probably will have to face later in the year, will carry high weight of 119 pounds Saturday in the $300,000 Gulfstream Park Handicap.

Seven other horses are entered, including Rhythm and Chief Honcho at 118 pounds apiece. Under 112 pounds, undefeated Jolie’s Halo won his fifth in a row by taking the Donn Handicap on Feb. 9 by eighth lengths in a wire-to-wire performance, with favored Rhythm finishing eighth. There’s a 10-pound swing in the weights for those two horses Saturday.

The April 14 match race at Santa Anita between Sunny Blossom, a thoroughbred, and Griswold, a quarter horse, is off.

After Sunny Blossom ran poorly in his first 1991 outing, his trainer, Eddie Gregson, wants more time to see where he stands with the horse before mapping out a schedule.

The half-mile match would have had a $100,000, winner-take-all purse. There’s a possibility that Griswold might be matched against Olympic Prospect, another fast thoroughbred.

Kent Desormeaux’s agent, Gene Short, is happy that Chris McCarron will replace the injured Desormeaux on Apollo in the Jim Beam Stakes at Turfway Park on March 30.

“I’m glad Chris got the mount,” Short said. “He’s got a lot of other Kentucky Derby options, so there’s a good chance that he’ll only ride Apollo for this one race. Kent has a broken wrist, but we’re still hopeful that he’ll be riding by Derby day (May 4). If Apollo goes to the Derby, we’re hoping we can get back on him.”

Apollo has won four of five starts, finishing second to Dinard and McCarron in the San Rafael Stakes. Desormeaux has ridden Apollo in all the races except one, when because of a stewards’ suspension he was replaced by McCarron.

Horse Racing Notes

The parties aren’t saying, but it has been reported that the sale price of Lite Light was $1.5 million, minus any purse money the filly would win in the Santa Anita Oaks, which was run a couple of days after Jack Finley sold her to M.C. Hammer and his family. Lite Light earned $122,100 for winning the Oaks. . . . The silks of Clover Racing Stable are covered with shamrocks, and the outfit won two races on St. Patrick’s Day when Kanatiyr clicked at Santa Anita and Santa Catalina won at Gulfstream Park. Clover’s Barry Irwin said this was the first time the stable had started horses on March 17.

Jackie Wackie, who ran next to last as the second betting choice in the Florida Derby, came back after the race with a 102-degree fever. . . . Greydar, who has already won one race this season at Oaklawn Park, is the 2-1 favorite in Saturday’s Razorback Handicap.

Trainer Charlie Whittingham plans to run both Excavate and Compelling Sound in the Santa Anita Derby. . . . Hollywood Park is seeking state permission to offer a $1 exacta bet on Thursdays only. . . . Mineral Ice, one of the favorites in Saturday’s Bay Shore at Aqueduct, was not an early nominee for the Triple Crown races.