3 Are Out to Eclipse In Excess : Horse racing: Festin, Tight Spot and Dance Smartly have shots at horse of year.

The defection of In Excess from today’s $3-million Breeders’ Cup Classic has given horse-of-the-year hopes to trainers who would appear to be thinking wishfully.

Bobby Frankel lobbies for Marquetry, who is not even an afterthought in most horse-of-the-year talk.

“This is the championship race,” Frankel said. “You can’t win the championship if you pull out of the seventh game of the World Series.”

That was a reference to trainer Bruce Jackson’s decision to run In Excess, the horse-of-the-year favorite, in the Mile on grass instead of in the 1 1/4-mile Classic on dirt.

Jackson’s choice, based on In Excess’ apparent dislike for the dirt track here, was unpopular as far away as France, where fans of the miler Hector Protector are angry because In Excess’ presence in the Mile bumped their horse from the oversubscribed 14-horse stake.

Marquetry has beaten Farma Way, but only by a nose and with a 12-pound weight advantage. And Marquetry has beaten Festin, but there are several holes in his record.

More realistically, the finalists for horse of the year are In Excess, Tight Spot, Festin and Dance Smartly, no matter what Wayne Lukas says. “It would be a travesty if that filly (Dance Smartly) got horse of the year,” Lukas said earlier this week, before his championship contender, Farma Way, was eliminated from the Classic because of a sore ankle. “I don’t see any Winning Colors around here, and certainly not that filly.”

Lukas won the horse-of-the-year title with a filly, Lady’s Secret, in 1986, and Winning Colors was the filly that gave the trainer his only Kentucky Derby winner, in 1988.

In the best of worlds, the horse-of-the-year contenders would be lined up in the same starting gate and the job for the Eclipse Awards voters--about 250 track racing secretaries, turf writers and Daily Racing Form operatives--would be a lot easier.

Instead, in the eighth Breeders’ Cup, the four finalists will be running in three races, with only Tight Spot and In Excess overlapping.

Festin, despite being the morning-line favorite in the Classic, will have several late-running horses to beat, including Unbridled and Strike The Gold, the Kentucky Derby winners of the last two years. The Churchill Downs stretch, at 1,234 1/2 feet, is the longest in the country, which suits Festin’s late-running style.

The horse-of-the-year candidate with the best chance to win today is Dance Smartly, who is undefeated in seven races this year. But to have an outside chance for top honors, Dance Smartly must win and then wait to see if In Excess, Tight Spot and Festin all lose. The Eclipse voters get to wait until the end of the year to send in their ballots.

Scattered showers made Churchill Downs a sloppy track for Friday’s racing, but with no rain expected today, the quick-drying surface could be fast by the time the Classic, the last stake on the seven-race, $10-million card, is run. The grass course, which will be used for the Mile and the Turf Stakes, is certain to be soft, with European horses expected to benefit. They are more accustomed to running on damp turf.

On a victories-per-start ratio, Festin has the poorest record of the final four. He has lost seven out of 10 races, but by virtue of high finishes that included victories in the Oaklawn Handicap, the Nassau County Handicap and the Jockey Club Gold Cup, he finished second to Farma Way in the American Championship Racing Series. After a 10-race cross-country tour, Festin had run seven times, earning a bonus of $375,000, besides the regular purse money. Farma Way’s bonus was $750,000.

In the last race of the series, the Woodward Stakes at Belmont Park on Sept. 15, Festin bled from the lungs and still finished third, behind In Excess and Farma Way. Festin will be able to run today on Lasix, a medication that is prohibited at Belmont.

After the Woodward, trainer Ron McAnally debated about running Festin again in New York because of his bleeding problem. But in the Jockey Club Gold Cup, Festin ran and won without Lasix and without bleeding, sending his earnings over $2 million. First place in the Classic would make his owner, Burt Kinerk, $1.56 million richer, minus the 5% of the purse that he has been contributing to various charities in his hometown, Phoenix.

McAnally wanted the Jockey Club Gold Cup race for Festin because he felt that 47 days would have been too much of a layoff after the Woodward. In the Gold Cup, jockey Eddie Delahoussaye had Festin in fourth place early, a more forward position than he is used to.

That apparently was more happenstance than planning.

“We really don’t want to alter his running style because it has worked so well,” McAnally said Friday. “If Eddie wants to be closer, however, it will be his decision to make. He knows all the horses in the race, and he has the green light.”

Delahoussaye won back-to-back Kentucky derbies, with Gato Del Sol in 1982 and Sunny’s Halo in 1983, and has won two Breeders’ Cup races. But when the cup races were run at Churchill Downs in 1988, he was zero for four. His best finish was aboard Goodbye Halo, who was third behind Personal Ensign and Winning Colors.

The Breeders’ Cup

The $10 million championship, the richest day in thoroughbred racing, returns today to storied Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky. A record crowd of 71,237 braved cold, showery weather when the Breeders’ Cup was last held at Churchill Downs in 1988, and the partisans may get much of the same--the forecast is for partly cloudy skies and a high temperature of 45 degrees.

The Races

Some of the luster went out of the $3 million Classic when Horse of the Year candidates In Excess and Farma Way pulled out--In Excess making a controversial move to the $1 million Turf Mile, Farma Way sidelined by an ankle injury. A distinguished field of 11, including 1990 Classic champion Unbridled, is left to run in the world’s richest race. Unbridled and Strike The Gold are the last two Kentucky Derby winners, significant because the last five winners of the Classic have been Derby champions.

TV: Channel 4, 9 a.m.

Race Purse Post Time Sprint $1 million 9:16 a.m. Juvenile Fillies $1 million 9:45 a.m. Distaff $1 million 10:19 a.m. Mile $1 million 10:51 a.m. Juvenile $1 million 11:25 a.m. Turf $2 million 12:01 p.m. Classic $3 million 12:35 p.m.

Horse of the Year

The decision to run In Excess in the Turf Mile instead of the Classic has not necessarily diminished the Cup’s impact on the Horse of the Year selection. The leading candidates will be accounted for in three races, with In Excess and co-favorite Tight Spot dueling in the Turf Mile, Canadian Filly Dance Smartly running in the Distaff and Festin in the Classic. A look at the leading candidates:

In Excess

Trainer:.......Bruce Jackson

Owner:........Jack J. Munari

1991: starts: 7

1991: wins: 5

1991: place: 0

1991: show: 1

Earnings: $1,328,800

The handlers of In Excess, accused by rival trainer Wayne Lukas of running a creampuff campaign, did nothing to defuse that argument by skipping the Classic to run in the Turf Mile. Although they get a preferred shorter distance in the mile, they also run into Tight Spot, which is undefeated on grass. The four-year-old has won six of 12 lifetime starts on turf, and has won its last four races, all Grade I, since finishing fourth in the Santa Anita Handicap on March 9.

Tight Spot

Trainer: Ron McAnally

Owner: V.H. Winchell

1991: starts: 5

1991: wins: 5

1991: place: 0

1991: show: 0

Earnings: $1,008,800

The 4-year old had run a limited campaign, running about once a month since opening at Hollywood Park in May, but you can’t argue with the results. Won of each of its starts this year, and all eight of its career races on turf. Last victory was in the Arlington Million on Sept. 1. Tight Spot likes to run on the front end, as does In Excess, and if it doesn’t get compromised in a speed duel, the first one to the wire could emerge as the Horse of the Year.

Festin

Trainer: Ron McAnally

Owner: Don Yayo Haras

1991: starts: 10

1991: wins: 3

1991: place: 2

1991: show: 2

Earnings: $2,003,250

The 5-year-old won the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park on Oct. 5. He Finished third to In Excess and Farma Way in the Woodward Stakes on Sept. 15. The late-running Argentine-bred was runner-up in the American Championship Racing Series to Farma Way, and a victory in the Classic would be a convincing argument in the balloting.

Dance Smartly

Trainer: James E. Day

Owner: Sam-Son Farms (Canada)

1991: starts: 7

1991: wins: 7

1991: place: 0

1991: show: 0

Earnings: $2,356,821

The 3-year-old filly won the Canadian Triple Crown against males. The knock on her credentials is that each of her wins this year have been in Canada. Her last appearance in the U.S. was also her last loss--a third-place effort in the Juvenile Fillies in the 1990 Breeders’ Cup, a race in which she set the fractions before weakening and finished third to Meadow Star and Private Treasure.