THOROUGHBRED RACING : Quintana’s Trainer Is No Stranger

Hansel wins the beauty contest. Corporate Report is the horse most likely to leave no grass for anyone else when he’s grazing, being a voracious nibbler of the first order. Sea Cadet has only the hint of a tail. Green Alligator has the funniest name, which comes from the lyric of an Irish drinking song.

But the horse with the most interesting past in the 117th Kentucky Derby field is Quintana. A gelding hasn’t won the Derby in a long time--since 1929--and fillies win the race on an average of about once every 38 years, but a horse that has been claimed has never won the Derby. At least as far as Jim Bolus, the foremost Derby historian, has been able to ascertain.

On Feb. 1, just before he won his first race in three starts while going a mile at Santa Anita, Quintana wasn’t claimed from simply another trainer, he was taken from Wayne Lukas for $50,000. Lukas has become Mr. Kentucky Derby, of sorts, not because he wins the race all that often, for he’s only won it once, but because he’s had at least one starter here every year since 1981. This year, though, that grass-eating machine, Corporate Report, is Lukas’ lone representative, out of 29 nominations.

The horseman who claimed Quintana from Lukas isn’t just another trainer, either. In 1983, David C. Cross Jr. was Mr. Kentucky Derby. He brought a Canadian-bred, Canadian-owned colt out of California, where he had swum at Hollywood Park all winter as therapy for ailing legs, and won the Derby. Cross thought so much of Sunny’s Halo that he gave up the rest of the horses in his barn to concentrate on preparing the son of Halo for Churchill Downs.

All the way to the rose coronation, Cross was his own man. Jockey Angel Cordero tried to hustle Cross into a lucrative deal before he would ride Sunny’s Halo in the Arkansas Derby, the colt’s final Kentucky Derby prep. All Cordero wanted was a $25,000 appearance fee and a round-trip charter flight from New York. Cross found Eddie Delahoussaye for a lot less, and he rode Sunny’s Halo to victory in both Arkansas and Kentucky, becoming one of those rare jockeys to win the Derby two consecutive years. Gato Del Sol had been his winner the year before.

Those were giddy days. Patty Cross, the trainer’s wife, won the backstretch personality contest, by the length of the stretch. She ran a bar in Toronto and had concocted the Sunny’s Halo, a drink named after the horse. Nobody let on that Patty Cross had incurable cancer.

David Cross had worries enough already, but that June, weeks after winning the Derby, he ran Sunny’s Halo at Arlington Park. The horse had developed a bad rash the day after the Derby, and the medication Cross gave him in Chicago was against Illinois rules and turned up on the postrace urinalysis after a fourth-place finish.

The Arlington stewards wanted to give Cross five days and tell him to make sure it didn’t happen again. It had never happened before, in a training career of about 30 years. But the Illinois racing commission, gave Cross 10 months.

Cross spent about $150,000 unsuccessfully trying to clear his name. Patty Cross died, after incurring a lot of medical bills that her husband struggled to pay, and it was almost two years before Cross surfaced again. Mr. Kentucky Derby of 1983 was training quarter horses, and trying to find some cheap California-breds who might be able to run half as fast as Sunny’s Halo.

Now, Cross is back at Churchill Downs, trying to win another Derby with a horse Wayne Lukas didn’t like too much. Does Cross have a chip on his shoulder because of the way his life had collapsed?

It’s not a chip, it’s a redwood.

He revisited Oaklawn Park three weeks ago, with Quintana finishing a troubled fourth in the Arkansas Derby, and couldn’t find one photograph of Sunny’s Halo in the place. He can’t forget the sour-grapes things trainer Woody Stephens said about Sunny’s Halo’s victory. Stephens couldn’t beat Cross’ horse with two starters--Caveat and Chumming--in the Derby.

“A man’s lifetime achievement, and somebody like Stephens comes along and tries to cheapen it,” Cross said. “Why couldn’t the man just admit that we beat him, fair and square?”

Cross’ main man in 1983 was Pud Foster, the fellow Canadian who raced Sunny’s Halo. Cross is here now because Gary Garber, a plastics manufacturer from Tarzana, has staked him to some horses and put up the $50,000 to claim Quintana. Garber, 50, makes the bags that grapes are wrapped in, and the plastic wraps that supermarkets put around lettuce.

Garber can relate to comebacks. In February of 1989, he and his wife Diane and another couple were on their way to New Zealand for a vacation. There was a stop in Honolulu, and 22 minutes after the plane left there, a cargo door blew open. The man sitting in front of Gary Garber was sucked out the window, and eight others were killed.

“The whole thing took about one and a half seconds,” Garber said.

The plane’s roof caved in and two fingers on Garber’s left hand still require a little workup before he can get them going in the morning. The Garbers don’t fly as much as they used to, and Diane sees a psychiatrist to help her overcome the lingering fears.

Garber, relatively new to racing, supports David Cross the way Pud Foster used to.

“He’s the most honest person I’ve ever been around,” Garber says of his trainer.

There are times when Cross’ honesty has gotten him into trouble, but this is the man, take him or leave him. If Quintana, a 30-1 shot on the morning line, wins Saturday, even Cross might tread lightly with victory. After all, he’s been there before, only to lose everything.

Horse Racing Notes

Pat Day’s 1-2-3 in the Kentucky Derby: Corporate Report, Hansel and Best Pal. No one needs to be told that Day rides Corporate Report. . . . Exclusive Bird, ridden by Jerry Bailey, won the La Troienne Stakes for 3-year-old fillies at Churchill Downs Thursday with Wilderness Song finishing second, 1 1/4 lengths back. . . . Day won four races on the card, giving him 17 victories in 38 mounts for the first six days of the meeting.

In workouts for Derby horses Thursday, Dixieland Band went a half-mile in :49 4/5, Another Review was clocked in :47 3/5 and Forty Something’s time was :47 2/5. . . . Green Alligator worked but was on the track before 6 in the morning and the clockers didn’t catch him. Trainer Murray Johnson said that the California Derby winner finished his workout with a quarter-mile of “22 and change.”

Chris McCarron, who will ride Sea Cadet in the Derby, visited Alysheba, his 1987 Derby winner, Thursday at Lane’s End Farm in Lexington, Ky. It was the first time McCarron had seen the horse since he was retired to stud. . . . On Wednesday, trainer Ron McAnally visited John Henry, his two-time horse of the year, at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington. “John, John,” McAnally shouted into John Henry’s stall. The 16-year-old gelding came to the door. The bags of carrots and apples McAnally had might have helped.