DEL MAR : Turf Handicaps Top Weekend

The first 15 days of Del Mar’s 43-day season have been merely preliminaries. What promises to be two of the best cards of the meeting will be run this weekend, with the Flawlessly-Kostroma rivalry renewed today in the Ramona Handicap, and Tight Spot trying to repeat Sunday as the winner of the Eddie Read Handicap.

Both are $300,000 races at 1 1/8 miles on turf--the Ramona for fillies and mares, the Eddie Read for horses that frequently go on to win or at least run well in the Arlington Million three weeks later.

Last year Tight Spot became the third horse, after Perrault in 1982 and Golden Pheasant in 1990, to use the Read as a springboard for victory in the Million. In 18 previous runnings of the Read, only one horse, Wickerr in 1981-82, has won the race in successive years.

One of Tight Spot’s opponents, Luthier Enchanteur, is owned by Edmund Gann and trained by Bobby Frankel, who also trained Wickerr. Frankel has won the Read five times, most recently with Saratoga Passage in 1989. Sunday, he will also run Marquetry, coupled with Luthier Enchanteur in the betting.

Luthier Enchanteur, who will be ridden by Pat Valenzuela and carry 115 pounds, drew the inside post. The rest of the lineup, in order, consists of Tight Spot, Laffit Pincay, 125 pounds; Marquetry, David Flores, 118; Forty Niner Days, Corey Nakatani, 116; Leger Cat, Kent Desormeaux, 115; Golden Pheasant, Gary Stevens, 122; Victory Park, Modesto Linares, 108, and Qathif, Alex Solis, 116.

Tight Spot, the national male grass champion last year, hasn’t raced since he won the San Francisco Mile at Golden Gate Fields five months ago. In his only other start this year, the Ron McAnally trainee won an allowance race at Santa Anita.

Tight Spot, bred by his owner, Verne Winchell, is a 5-year-old who has had only 20 starts because of hoof and ankle problems. Weight considerations--he was assigned 129 pounds for one race--and McAnally’s fear that he was not ready to run today’s distance prevented Tight Spot from making an appearance earlier this summer at Hollywood Park.

Even before last year’s Read, Tight Spot was one of Del Mar’s stars. In 1990, he won the La Jolla Handicap and the Del Mar Derby, but nothing has come easy for him here. The La Jolla victory was by a nose over Itsallgreektome, and although Tight Spot’s margin over the same rival was three lengths in the roughly run Del Mar Derby, Winchell didn’t collect the purse until a year later, after debates that involved the track stewards, the California Horse Racing Board and a court judge.

And in last year’s Read, Tight Spot’s 3 1/2-length winning margin was allowed to stand after a foul claim by the jockey of another horse.

All of this battling, both on and off the track, has left Tight Spot with a record of 12 victories, three seconds, one third and earnings of $1.5 million. On grass, he is 10 for 11, the only loss a ninth-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Mile last year.

Pincay, who has ridden Tight Spot in all of his races starting with the Del Mar Derby, spanning eight victories in nine starts, is a four-time winner of the Read, which is named after the late public relations director at Del Mar.

Off to a slow start at Del Mar, Pincay has a chance for a cross-country stakes weekend. Today, he will ride Southland-based Pacific Squall in the $200,000 Alabama Stakes for 3-year-old fillies at Saratoga in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

Like Tight Spot, Golden Pheasant doesn’t race often. After finishing third in the 1990 Read and winning the Arlington Million, the 6-year-old suffered a broken cannon bone while training for that fall’s Breeders’ Cup. He didn’t run for a year, returning to action here last season.

Off three non-winning performances in the United States, trainer Charlie Whittingham sent him to Tokyo in November for a victory at 17-1 in the Japan Cup. That purse was worth about $1.2 million to Golden Pheasant’s owners, Bruce McNall and Wayne Gretzky, and a little later, they sold the horse, who had been a $400,000 purchase, to Zenya Yoshida, a Japanese owner-breeder, for a reported $2.5 million.

In Yoshida’s colors, Golden Pheasant has made three starts, resulting in a fourth at Santa Anita, a victory in the Inglewood Handicap at Hollywood Park and a third at 3-5 in Hollywood’s American Handicap on July 4. The American was a four-horse race, but Golden Pheasant had enough trouble to account for the half-length by which he lost to Man From Eldorado.

The Flawlessly-Kostroma rivalry began in the Yellow Ribbon at Santa Anita in November. Kostroma spotted her younger rival four pounds and won by two lengths.

They met again three weeks later in the Matriarch at Hollywood Park. Flawlessly, under three fewer pounds than Kostroma, evened the score as Kostroma finished sixth.

They were at Hollywood again in late June for the Beverly Hills Handicap. McCarron sent Flawlessly to the front alone, and she beat Kostroma by a head, with a two-pound edge in the weights.

Today, they will be even in the weights with 123 pounds apiece. Del Mar’s grass course, much deeper than Hollywood’s, should be kinder to Kostroma, who sometimes has sore hoofs.

Horse Racing Notes

It is unlikely that Campagnarde will join three other horses who have won the Ramona in consecutive years. The others were Desert Trial in 1966-67, Street Dancer in 1971-72 and Queen To Conquer in 1980-81. . . . The last time Tight Spot returned from a long layoff, he won five consecutive races. The first victory in the streak came after more than eight months of inactivity.

Pacific Squall’s chief rival in the Alabama is expected to be November Snow, who has won at Saratoga. Pacific Squall won the Honeymoon Handicap and the Hollywood Oaks at Hollywood Park and is four for five overall. Her stablemate, Bien Bien, is also at Saratoga, getting ready for the Travers a week from today.

Jockey Russell Baze began the week with 261 victories for the year, which leads the nation. Next on the list are Edgar Prado with 234 and Kent Desormeaux with 228. The only other California rider among the leaders besides Desormeaux is Eddie Delahoussaye, who has won 188 races. Prado will be riding at Del Mar on Aug. 30, when Jolie’s Halo runs in the Pacific Classic.