THOROUGHBRED RACING : Hot Horses Keep McAnally on Move

“I got one more, on Friday,” a weary Ron McAnally was saying the other day.

The 59-year-old trainer was talking about life on the road this year, the trips he has made to get the horses in his high-profile stable to the stakes races they’ve run.

“If it’s Friday, this must be the Meadowlands,” McAnally could say to himself this week.

Sea Cadet, that clip-tailed 3-year-old, is running tonight as one of the favorites in the $500,000 Meadowlands Cup, a race that could take McAnally’s barn closer to the $8-million level in 1991 purses.

Wayne Lukas’ multifaceted national operation routinely accounts for higher purses, averaging $12.4 million annually during its eight-year hold on the national training title, but only two other trainers have gone over the $8-million mark. Charlie Whittingham has done it three times and Shug McGaughey once.

McAnally, whose previous high was $5.4 million last year, had a second thought about the dozens of trips he’s made this year.

“Of course, when you’re traveling, it means that you’ve got enough good horses to justify the trips,” he said.

Five horses--Festin, Tight Spot, Olympio, Sea Cadet and Brought To Mind--have accounted for more than $4 million of the $7.2 million that the McAnally barn has collected. Arguably, McAnally has two of the three top horses in the country in Tight Spot, who will be running in the Breeders’ Cup Mile on grass at Churchill Downs on Nov. 2; and Festin, who will be trying to dislodge In Excess as the horse of the year pro tem in the Breeders’ Cup Classic the same afternoon.

No matter what happens in the races ahead, McAnally is a serious contender for trainer of the year. Eclipse Award voters, acknowledging Lukas’ boxcar figures, gave him the award three consecutive times, starting in 1985, but since then they have looked elsewhere, rewarding trainers who don’t have hundreds of horses to work with.

This year, for example, Lukas has started about 2 1/2 times as many horses as McAnally and leads him in the money standings by about $5 million. But there may not be a trainer in the country with McAnally’s batting average in stakes races. He’s won about one of every three in which he has had a horse.

McAnally won a training Eclipse Award in 1981, the year Whittingham beat him out for the money title by about $200,000. The voters were swayed by the work McAnally did with the fragile-legged John Henry, who was voted horse of the year.

McAnally still thinks that Festin can be this year’s horse of the year, even though he ran third, three lengths behind In Excess, in the Woodward Stakes at Belmont Park on Sept. 15. Festin returned three weeks later and won the Jockey Club Gold Cup, with his jockey, Eddie Delahoussaye, keeping the late-running Argentine-bred closer to the pace than he was in other races.

A Kentucky native--he grew up in an orphanage not far from Turfway Park--McAnally knows Churchill Downs, the site of the next Festin-In Excess battle, as well as any visiting trainer. McAnally has started five horses in the Kentucky Derby, finishing fourth with both Super Moment in 1980 and Water Bank in 1982.

“I don’t care what anybody says, I don’t think Churchill Downs favors speed, and I think horses coming from off the pace will do well there,” McAnally said. “That factor and that long stretch (at 1,234 1/2 feet, the longest in the country) should help Festin.”

When the Breeders’ Cup was run at Churchill Downs in 1988, Alysheba and Seeking The Gold came from off the pace to finish 1-2 in the Classic.

When the California-based Lukas runs horses out of town, he has a staff of assistant trainers, led by his son, Jeff, to handle the responsibilities. McAnally, dealing in far fewer horses, has no such depth on his staff, the No. 2 man being Eduardo Inda, whose loyalties predate even the John Henry days.

Last Sunday, when Brought To Mind ran in the Spinster at Keeneland, McAnally had come home and left the saddling duties to Inda. What McAnally missed in Kentucky was not a pretty sight--Brought To Mind stumbling out of the gate and running 13th in a 14-horse field.

McAnally, still considering the Breeders’ Cup Distaff for the gray filly, also hopes her dull showing relates to a lack of fondness for the Keeneland track.

“When she doesn’t like a track, there’s no in-between,” the trainer said. “She just won’t run at all.”

After arriving in New Jersey, McAnally found that it was raining Thursday. Long overdue for Sea Cadet is an off track, which his trainer believes would be made to order.

“It would help tremendously,” McAnally said. “Funny that he’s never caught a muddy track. Not even in Seattle (at Longacres), where they get about 52 inches of rain a year.”

Horse Racing Notes

Sea Cadet is the 5-1 third choice in the 10-horse Meadowlands Cup, behind Scan at 5-2 and Twilight Agenda, 3-1. In the Pegagus Handicap on Sept. 20, Scan beat Sea Cadet by 1 3/4 lengths, setting a track record with 1:46 2/5 for 1 1/8 miles. Tonight’s race is the same distance. . . . Val Des Bois will carry high weight of 118 pounds Saturday in the $100,000 Koester Handicap, a mile turf race at Santa Anita. Others running in the nine-horse field are Ibero, Tokatee, Anjiz, Raj Waki, Repriced, Madjaristan, Blaze O’Brien and Rudy’s Fantasy.

Best Pal worked on the grass for the first time, covering six furlongs Thursday in 1:11 2/5. Trainer Gary Jones’ options are the California Cup Classic on dirt on Nov. 9 or the Burke Handicap on turf on Nov. 11. . . . Tark The Shark, the heavily bet, easy winner of a maiden race at Santa Anita Thursday, is named after Jerry Tarkanian, the University of Nevada Las Vegas basketball coach. Tarkanian, joining the owners in the winner’s circle, had rearranged his practices in order to see the race.