Pincay Breaks Shoemaker’s Track Record : Santa Anita: He rides five winners, including Exchange in the La Canada Stakes, and now has 2,250 in Arcadia.

There are risky propositions at any race track, but if ever there appeared to be a sure parlay, it was Exchange running and Laffit Pincay riding on Sunday at Santa Anita.

Neither the 4-year-old filly nor the 45-year-old jockey disappointed. Exchange, the onetime $50,000 claimer, extended her winning streak to five with a 1 1/4-length victory in the $218,250 La Canada Stakes, with Pincay riding his fifth winner of the day and lengthening his position as the record- holder for most victories at Santa Anita.

Bill Shoemaker, who retired to take up training in early 1990, held the Santa Anita record for most victories with 2,247 until Pincay rode his third winner Sunday, riding Individualist to a come-from-behind victory by a head over High Energy in the $110,600 Palos Verdes Handicap.

Pincay finished the day with 2,250 at Santa Anita and 7,722 overall. Shoemaker, who began riding in 1949, finished with 8,833 and is the only jockey ahead of Pincay.

Pincay has also won 444 races, more than anyone else, at Oak Tree, the association that has been conducting an abbreviated fall season at Santa Anita since 1969.

“Laffit is 45, going on 29,” said Chris McCarron, who has battled Pincay for national titles for more than a decade.

Favored Exchange paid $4.60 to win, but three of Pincay’s winners Sunday were longshots, including Individualist, who paid $19.40 after being beaten in five of his six previous starts.

“I consider Bill Shoemaker to be the greatest rider I ever met, so I feel fortunate and proud (to break Shoemaker’s record),” Pincay said.

Pincay recalled that Rising Market, an allowance horse, had given him his first Santa Anita victory. The date was opening day, the day after Christmas, in 1966. Pincay had ridden his first career winner as a teen-ager in his native Panama two years before.

“I beat Shoe by a head,” Pincay said. “He was on a horse named Sand Devil for (trainer Charlie) Whittingham.”

Pincay was right again, except that the margin was a nose instead of a head.

“I was very excited,” Pincay said. “I had heard of Shoe since I was a little kid.”

Pincay made 114 pounds in riding Rising Market, but in more recent years he has seldom ridden at less than 117 pounds. There isn’t a jockey around who must watch his weight more carefully.

Right now, Pincay isn’t thinking about Shoemaker’s record of 8,833. “My goal now is to win 8,000 races,” he said. “I’ll have to see how I feel, then maybe go for Shoe’s record.”

Exchange had to survive a foul claim by Kent Desormeaux, aboard the sixth-place finisher, Goldmining, before her $128,250 victory became official for her owners, Sidney and Jenny Craig.

“Am I concerned?” said Bill Spawr, Exchange’s trainer, standing in the winner’s circle as he waited for the blinking tote-board lights to quit flashing. “Laffit’s not.”

The foul claim suggested that Exchange had been responsible for Goldmining bobbling at the three-eighths pole, but the three stewards ruled that there was no interference.

Winglet, who broke sideways leaving the gate, came from seventh place to finish second, a head better than Damewood, in the 1 1/8-mile race. Before an on-track crowd of 23,898, Exchange and Damewood battled for the lead through a moderate early pace, and after Exchange pulled away with about a sixteenth of a mile to run.

Since Spawr claimed Exchange, in her second start, from trainer Craig Lewis out of a race she won at Hollywood Park May 2, the Canadian-bred Explodent-Wooly Willow filly has won six times and turned in two seconds, one third and one fourth in 10 tries. Her first three victories in the current streak came on the grass.

Exchange’s widest winning margin for Spawr has been 1 3/4 lengths. “She could win by three, four, five lengths,” Pincay said, “but she won’t do it. She’s just fooling around in the stretch.”

The Craigs are so enamored with Exchange that they recently dispatched Spawr to Ocala, Fla., to privately purchase a yearling colt with identical bloodlines. The price was at least $100,000.

“The full brother will be in California in a few days,” Spawr said. “I don’t know what Exchange is worth. She just keeps doing what she has to do.”

Horse Racing Notes

Joy Scott, who had ridden only five times at the current meeting with no winners, was suspended for 60 days by the stewards after testing positive for cocaine. Scott, 33, began riding in 1981. A condition of her being relicensed is participation in a rehabilitation program. . . . In another race at Santa Anita on Sunday, Fanatic Boy, fourth in the Widener Handicap in his last start, came from far back to beat Missionary Ridge by a head in the Pinjara Stake. . . . Arazi, winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile last fall, will race once in France this spring, then head for the Kentucky Derby on May 2, one of his two owners said. The Times of London quoted Allen Paulson, who owns the colt along with Sheikh Mohammed, as saying the colt will have one race in France, then travel to Kentucky one week before the Derby.