Delahoussaye Rides to Rare Grade I Sweep : Horse racing: He guides Olympio and Eternity Star to victories in divisions of the Hollywood Derby.

Olympio, a horse Eddie Delahoussaye rides all the time, and Eternity Star, a horse he has been riding only recently, gave the 40-year-old jockey a rare Grade I sweep in a split major stake Sunday when they won divisions of the Hollywood Derby.

“I got the double,” Delahoussaye said after he guided Olympio to the wire, a half-length ahead of Bistro Garden, a hard-runnng colt from France. About 90 minutes earlier, Delahoussaye brought Eternity Star from sixth place at the eighth pole to a 1 3/4-length victory over Native Boundary in the first half of the Derby, which was split into $200,000 races after 22 horses were entered Thursday.

Delahoussaye has been Olympio’s regular companion as they have competed in most of the nation’s derbys this year. Olympio, bred and owned by Verne Winchell, ran second in the Super Derby at Louisiana Downs most recently, but before that trainer Ron McAnally’s colt won the Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park, the Minnesota Derby at Canterbury Downs and the American Derby at Arlington International.

Eternity Star is also a previous derby winner, having won the Del Mar grass stake for 3-year-olds in August at 38-1, giving Panamanian Frank Alvarado his first important victory. Not long afterward, however, Alvarado tested positive for cocaine and received a 60-day suspension from the stewards that ends this week.

Alvarado’s penalty opened up the mount on Eternity Star for Delahoussaye, and together they were third, beaten by only a head, in the roughly run Volante Handicap at Santa Anita on Oct. 27.

“We should have won the Volante,” said Delahoussaye, who told Eternity Star’s trainer, Bobby Frankel, all last week that the colt would be competitive Sunday.

Frankel has heard enough misguided optimism from jockeys through the years to be wary. “You know how jockeys are,” he said in the winner’s circle. “But with Eddie, it’s different. He’s not going to be high on a horse without good reason.”

Eternity Star, owned by Peter Wall, had been French-raced before winning the Del Mar Derby. The colt went off favored Sunday, paying $6.20 to win, earning $110,000 and running 1 1/8 miles on grass in 1:47 1/5. Olympio’s time was 1:47, three-fifths of a second slower than the stake record.

Native Boundary finished a head ahead of Perfectly Proud in the Eternity Star division. Delahoussaye wouldn’t have been able to ride Eternity Star--Corey Nakatani probably would have--if Frankel’s colt had drawn into the same half of the race as Olympio.

“I have to be thankful to Bobby,” Delahoussaye said. “Not many trainers would have gone that long without getting another rider. He just told me he’d hold the coat open for me, if I wanted to put it on.”

Perfectly Proud, winner of two of 16 starts, never tested in a stake and 45-1 on the tote board, tried to win wire to wire, and held on gamely before Eternity Star passed him and Native Boundary with a sixteenth of a mile to go.

“If my horse kicked in, I knew we’d be there,” Delahoussaye said. “He has a nice quarter-mile kick, and he should have a great future.”

In the second division, Delahoussaye wasn’t as confident about Olympio, and neither was McAnally. A son of Naskra, Olympio is bred for grass, but this was only his second turf start, and it had been almost two months since the Super Derby, in which the colt suffered a knee injury.

“I thought for sure he had fractured it,” McAnally said. “But we took X-rays, and it showed that he only wrenched it.”

Another long workout before Sunday would have made McAnally more comfortable. The favorite, Olympio paid $6.80 as he sent his earnings over $1.3 million. After the Arkansas Derby, McAnally kept him out of the Kentucky Derby, because the 1 1/4-mile distance might have been too demanding. Two weeks later, Olympio threw a shoe while running fourth in the Preakness.

On Sunday, before 16,125, Olympio stayed close to Lackington, a 31-1 shot who set the pace for three-quarters of a mile before finishing last.

Bistro Garden, who loomed in third place, found room inside with Chris McCarron to take the lead at the head of the stretch. For several strides, it appeared that Olympio and Delahoussaye would easily pass Bistro Garden, who held on until about six strides before the wire.

McCarron was also second, with Native Boundary, in the first division. Bistro Garden finished 1 1/2 lengths ahead of River Traffic.

“At the eighth pole, I knew I had a little left,” Delahoussaye said. “But it looked like Chris (with Bistro Garden) had a lot of horse left. But Olympio just dug in again, and it was just amazing how he fought back. All year he’s been a fighter.”