Best Pal Gets Last Laugh in Strub Run : Horse racing: Santa Anita track is fast and so is he, beating Dinard to wire by 1 1/4 lengths. Longshot Reign Road is third.

Hours before the $500,000 Charles H. Strub Stakes, trainers Gary Jones and Charlie Whittingham were exchanging jokes.

Jones laughed louder, perhaps because he was trying to take his mind off the storm that was expected to hit the track some time late in the day.

But the only storm Sunday afternoon was Best Pal, and he was right on schedule. Blowing through the stretch as he had in his previous race, the 4-year-old gelding held off the improving Dinard to win by 1 1/4 lengths before an on-track crowd of 26,396.

“I don’t know what he (Best Pal) would have done with an off track,” Jones said. “But with a 6-5 shot in a race this important, who wants to take the chance? You’d just as soon see him run on a track that you know he can handle.”

Best Pal handled the track, the same surface on which he produced a 3 1/2-length victory in the San Fernando Stakes three weeks ago, and he also handled what basically was the same group of opponents. The difference among the runners-up on Sunday was Dinard, beaten by nine lengths in a third-place finish in the San Fernando but a serious challenger this time.

John Mabee, who with his wife Betty bred and races Best Pal, got a surprise when he arrived at Santa Anita. “I thought the race was at equal weights,” Mabee said. “Then I looked up and saw where we were at 124 (pounds), giving everyone else weight.”

Weights will continue to be a consideration for the Mabees and Jones when they run Best Pal on March 7 in the $1-million Santa Anita Handicap. Sunday’s weights were based on money won; the Big ‘Cap horses will carry whatever Tom Robbins’ Santa Anita racing department decides is fair.

Best Pal has now won as many stakes in 1992 as he did all last year, when he won the Swaps at Hollywood Park and the Pacific Classic at Del Mar out of 10 starts. Since the Mabees switched the horse from Ian Jory to Jones last June, Best Pal has won four of seven starts, with two seconds and a fourth, and overall his winnings have reached $2.5 million.

Reign Road, a 61-1 shot with no stakes victories, finished third, beaten by nine lengths, and it was another three-quarters of a length back to Olympio, the 2-1 second choice. The scratch of Ev For Shir, who was to race only if the track was muddy, reduced the field to eight starters. Best Pal’s time of 1:59 4/5 for 1 1/4 miles was one of the best ever for a Strub winner and the fastest in the race since Spectacular Bid’s American record of 1:57 4/5 in 1980.

Best Pal gave Kent Desormeaux, Santa Anita’s leading jockey, his 11th victory in the last four days.

“When it’s your turn, it’s your turn,” said Desormeaux, 21, who in 1989 broke Chris McCarron’s record for winners in a year when he rode 598 while based in Maryland. “I was riding just the same last year (at Santa Anita), and I had 65 seconds and everyone said I was riding badly. The horse is 90% of what a jockey does, and Best Pal is by far the best I’ve ever been on. He gives you 100% every time, and he’s run in the biggest races every time he’s gone out there. He’s a tremendous animal.”

Down the backstretch, Desormeaux and Best Pal were a close-up third, as Olympio and Charmonnier battled for the lead.

“I didn’t care for my position then,” Desormeaux said. “I would have preferred to have been more backwardly placed. But the (front-runners in earlier races were) tough today, so it was hard to take him back, knowing that.”

At the top of the stretch, Desormeaux hit him twice left-handed near the eighth pole, gave him another two blows with his whip later, and pulling up past the finish line, was surprised to see how close Dinard, carrying 120 pounds, had come.

Desormeaux has ridden Best Pal in his last three races, taking over after Pat Valenzuela signed a year-long exclusivity contract with owner Allen Paulson, whose horses include Dinard and Arazi, the future-book favorite for the Kentucky Derby.

Dinard, injured last April while preparing for the 1991 Kentucky Derby, had two comeback races before the Strub, and his two-turn effort in the San Fernando, while disappointing, must have made him a better horse Sunday.

“I think he’s back to his old self,” Valenzuela said. “This is the first time he’s ever run a mile and a quarter. He’s improved tremendously, and I think he’ll be double tough next time.”

Horse Racing Notes

One of the first unseasoned California-based 3-year-olds to assert himself is Mineral Wells, who beat four stakes winners and two other rivals Sunday, winning the $106,450 San Vicente Breeders’ Cup Stakes by a nose over Star of the Crop. Mineral Wells’ number stayed up following a stewards’ inquiry. Both Mineral Wells and Star of the Crop bumped each other during the stretch run. Mineral Wells, a $500,000 yearling by Mr. Prospector, has won three consecutive races, with Sunday’s seven furlongs the longest race. Pat Valenzuela rode Mineral Wells, who was saddled by Jeff Lukas in the absence of his father, Wayne, who suffered three broken ribs when he was thrown by his pony during training Tuesday. Mineral Wells’ time of 1:21 1/5 missed Ancient Title’s 1973 stakes record by a fifth of a second.

Another promising 3-year-old, trainer Charlie Whittingham’s well-bred Liginsky, was scratched from the sixth race. “I was rushing him just to get him ready for this race and just decided to give him more time,” Whittingham said. “I’ll run him again in a week or so.” Liginsky, a small son of Nijinsky II, has run once, finishing third at Hollywood Park on Dec. 8.

Whittingham expects Miss Alleged, the champion female turf horse in 1991, to make her debut this year in the San Luis Obispo Handicap on Feb. 17. . . . Twilight Agenda, expected to challenge Best Pal in the Santa Anita Handicap, warmed up for next Saturday’s San Antonio Handicap by working five furlongs in 58 2/5. . . . Eddie Delahoussaye didn’t have a good feeling about Olympio even though they were close to the pace in the Strub. “He was trying to get out the whole way,” Delahoussaye said. “He’s been training well in the mornings, but I guess his knees might be bothering him. He wasn’t happy at all out there.”