HORSE RACING BLUE GRASS STAKES : Pistols And Roses Gets New Rider, Better Race

Sheldon Willis bought his first two horses about nine years ago, paying $25,000 for the package. One of them was called Kiss Me Baby.

“Boy, did I get kissed,” said Willis, 64, a semi-retired insurance executive from Golden Beach, Fla., not far from Gulfstream Park. “The horse never ran, and around the barn he would try to tear his stall down. I finally gave him away. Well, actually, I sold him for a dollar.”

Kiss Me Baby was a gray horse. Willis’ latest gray, Pistols And Roses, cost $25,000 all by himself. He has better deportment, doesn’t waste his energy in his stall and on Saturday won the $500,000 Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland by a neck over longshot Conte Di Savoya.

On May 2, Willis, whose racing memories begin with War Relic winning the Massachusetts Handicap at Suffolk Downs in 1941, is going to his first Kentucky Derby the right way--with a horse in the race.

Despite Arazi, the expected odds-on favorite for the Derby, there will be other horses from the Blue Grass joining Pistols And Roses at Churchill Downs--starting with Conte Di Savoya, the 73-1 shot whose only victory in 10 starts came in a 1 1/8-mile maiden race at Hialeah.

Stopped at the three-sixteenths pole when Ecstatic Ride closed a hole on them, Conte Di Savoya and jockey Shane Sellers were surging on the inside before the wire came up in time for Pistols And Roses.

“I’m excited about the way the horse finished, but I’m disappointed,” Sellers said. “There was no doubt that I had the best horse today.”

Conte Di Savoya, trained by two-time Derby winner LeRoy Jolley (Foolish Pleasure and Genuine Risk), finished 2 1/2 lengths ahead of Ecstatic Ride at 38-1, and it was another two lengths back to Dance Floor, the 6-5 favorite, in fourth place. Completing the order of finish in the 1 1/8-mile race were Saint Ballado, Tank’s Number, Binalong, Line In The Sand, Dash For Dotty, Colony Light and Just Like Perfect.

Pistols And Roses, who had won three stakes at Hialeah this winter, including the Flamingo, and ran third in both the Fountain of Youth and the Florida Derby at Gulfstream, paid $19.80 to win. He combined with Conte Di Savoya for a $2 exacta worth $1,578. Timed in 1:49, 1 3/5 seconds slower than the stakes record, Pistols And Roses earned $325,000 for winning his sixth race in 10 starts.

The other starts have also included two seconds and two thirds, but Pistols And Roses shipped to Kentucky with a stigma that his trainer, George Gianos, was quick to explain.

“This is a horse from a place that doesn’t command much respect,” Gianos said. “This is a Calder horse and a Calder trainer coming to Kentucky.”

Overshadowed by Hialeah and Gulfstream in the Miami area, Calder Race Course has never been called a cradle of champions.

Pistols And Roses was ridden for the first time by Jacinto Vasquez, 48, who won the 1988 Blue Grass with Granacus, another longshot, and rode both of Jolley’s Derby winners. Gianos said Saturday that he and Willis had mutually agreed to replace Heberto Castillo Jr., Pistols And Roses’ only previous rider.

Vasquez’s introduction to Pistols And Roses was two workouts in Florida before the Darn That Alarm-To Be Continued colt was shipped here last Sunday.

Pistols And Roses, breaking from the outside post, quickly went to the lead. “There were no instructions (from Gianos), and I did what I had to do,” Vasquez said. “I didn’t want to get hung up on the outside. If we were going to get beat, I figured we’d die on the lead, rather than having another excuse. But I had a lot of horse left at the end, and the mile and a quarter (of the Derby) will be no problem.”

Saint Ballado settled into second, and after six furlongs Dance Floor moved up on the outside into third, seemingly in perfect position. Having bled as the second-place finisher to Technology in the Florida Derby, Dance Floor qualified for the diuretic Lasix Saturday, and Jeff Lukas said after the race that there had been no bleeding.

The three leaders were in the same positions heading for home. “I was surprised that Dance Floor didn’t fire,” Gianos said. “I thought that my horse and Dance Floor would put away the horse in the middle (Saint Ballado) and then it would be a two-horse race the rest of the way.”

Said Dance Floor’s jockey, Chris Antley: “He was just galloping to the three-eighths pole. Coming to the five-sixteenths, I gave him a little nudge, but he didn’t respond, he didn’t take off. He ran the same kind of race as last time, when he beat Pistols And Roses (in the Florida Derby) even though he bled. He did no running, and I thought this field was easier than the previous one.”

Horse Racing Notes

Eddie Delahoussaye, who rode Dash For Dotty in the Blue Grass, will remain at Keeneland today to ride Pleasant Tap against Cardmania in the $175,000 Commonwealth Breeders’ Cup. Delahoussaye will ride Pleasant Stage in the Ashland at Keeneland next Saturday. . . . On Tuesday, Meadow Star will make her first start as a 4-year-old in Keeneland’s Thoroughbred Club of America Stakes.