Weight Is Nearly Over for Big ‘Cap : Horse racing: Trainers’ complaints about the assignments for the race will be set aside for about two minutes at Santa Anita today.

Retired Santa Anita racing secretary Lou Eilken fondly recalls the days when he became an outcast because of how he weighted horses.

“In the Santa Anita Handicap in 1978, I gave Vigors 127 pounds,” Eilken said. “That was six pounds more than he had carried while winning the San Antonio a few weeks before, and his owner (Fritz Hawn) couldn’t understand the big increase. Mr. Hawn wouldn’t even talk to me in the paddock before the race. But the San Antonio wasn’t a handicap then. It was run under allowance conditions, so the weights the horses carried in that race had no bearing on how you weighted them for the Big ‘Cap.”

Vigors, the 9-10 favorite, still won the Big ‘Cap, but high weights seldom win the race these days, even though horses rarely are asked to bear the weight carried by Vigors, or by John Henry and Spectacular Bid, who won with 130 pounds.

Some of the trainers for the 55th Big ‘Cap, which will be run today at Santa Anita, are running horses with comparatively light imposts, but their suggestion is to take the handicap out of the Santa Anita Handicap, so the best horses can be judged at equal weights.

“Fans come out to see the best horses run, not to find out how well a racing secretary weights them,” said Wayne Lukas, the trainer of Twilight Agenda, one of today’s favorites.

“Someone pays a lot of money to breed horses, and then when they finally get a good one, a racing secretary tries to get him beat, or, worse yet, break him down. We need horses that make the cover of Newsweek, not ones that wind up with two paragraphs on the back page of Sports Illustrated.”

Lukas refused to run Twilight Agenda in the San Antonio Handicap three weeks ago, objecting to the 126 pounds Santa Anita’s racing department assigned the horse. Twilight Agenda will carry 124 pounds today, the same as morning-line favorite Best Pal. That puzzles Gary Jones, Best Pal’s trainer, who can’t understand how a horse can drop two pounds without running.

Lukas is worried about running Twilight Agenda at 1 1/4 miles after a six-week layoff.

“There was no way that I was going to run in the San Antonio,” Lukas said. “If I had won with 126 pounds, then they would have piled on some more weight for this race.”

Bruce Jackson, whose In Excess will be running in the $1-million race with 123 pounds in a seven-horse field, shares Lukas’ concern. In Excess skipped the first race in the American Championship Racing Series because Jackson disagreed with the weights issued by Gulfstream Park for the Donn Handicap last month.

“Farma Way (Lukas’ horse) could have been a superstar last year, but for the weights,” Jackson said. “He was the best horse in the Hollywood Gold Cup, but the weights beat him. And the weights were a factor in the Iselin (Handicap), too.”

In the Hollywood Gold Cup, the front-running Marquetry, carrying 110 pounds to Farma Way’s 122, beat Lukas’ horse by a head. In the Iselin, at Monmouth Park, Black Tie Affair, with a three-pound weight edge, beat Farma Way by a neck. Black Tie Affair wound up being voted horse of the year.

Despite those losses, Farma Way was the top point-getter in the 10-race championship series, earning a bonus of $750,000.

“Let the stars be the stars,” Jackson said. “Make the Grade I races weight-for-age. Run the Grade II’s and the Grade III’s as handicaps.”

Of the nine races in this year’s championship series, the first six--the Donn, the Big ‘Cap, the Oaklawn Handicap, the Pimlico Special, the Nassau County Handicap and the Gold Cup--are stakes for which racing secretaries weight the horses. The weights for the New England Classic are determined by horses’ earnings, and then the series ends with the Iselin Handicap and Del Mar’s Pacific Classic, which is weight for age, older horses carrying the highest weights.

Tom Gamel, executive vice president of Hollywood Park, is a proponent of weight-for-age racing and probably will recommend that his track change the conditions of the Hollywood Gold Cup after this year.

The Breeders’ Cup Classic, first run in 1984, is weight-for-age, but handicap racing still has vocal proponents.

Whitney Tower, a noted racing journalist, once left Secretariat off his list of 10 greatest horses, the negatives being that the 1973 Triple Crown champion never carried more than 126 pounds and didn’t race beyond his 3-year-old season.

These days, horses seldom have to carry more than 126 pounds. Since 1983, the average high weight for the Santa Anita Handicap has been 124 pounds. Only two of the high-weight horses have won since then, Lord At War with 125 pounds in 1985 and Farma Way with 120 last year. In 1989, Martial Law, at 50-1, won the stake with 113 pounds, lowest weight carried by a winner in 29 years.

“Martial Law will become the answer to a trivia question,” Lukas said.

Big ‘Cap Notes

Post time for the 1 1/4-mile Santa Anita Handicap will be about 2:30, with the first post at noon. . . . Charlie Whittingham, trainer of eight Big ‘Cap winners, doesn’t have a starter in the race for the first time since 1980. Whittingham also had at least one horse in the race from 1967 through 1980. . . . Best Pal lightly worked about a mile Friday, and trainer Gary Jones reported that there was no bleeding or heat in the patched-up quarter crack in his left rear hoof. . . . The track, having been sealed before Thursday night’s heavy rain, was fast Friday.

Santa Anita Handicap Field

Post Horse Jockey 1. Fanatic Boy Delahoussaye 2. Ibero Valenzuela 3. Defensive Play Flores 4. Best Pal Desormeaux 5. Twilight Agenda McCarron 6. Algenib Pincay 7. In Excess Stevens