HORSE RACING: BREEDERS’ CUP : Thunder Regent Out to Repeat His Upset

David Wilkinson rode Thunder Regent once, when the 5-year-old gelding was a young horse.

“He was still a maiden,” half-owner Wilkinson said. “So was I. One stayed a maiden, and the other one didn’t.”

Thunder Regent has won nine races in 24 starts and on Saturday will be one of the longshots trying to win the $1-million Breeders’ Cup Mile at Gulfstream Park.

The Mile, one of the two Breeders’ Cup races run on grass, is a good spot for dreaming. In its previous eight runnings, only two winners--Royal Heroine in 1984 and Royal Academy, six years later--have been favorites. Some of the biggest payoffs in Breeders’ Cup history have been in the Mile, Last Tycoon returning $73.80 in 1986 and Opening Verse paying $55.40 last year.

“The starting gate will open for everybody,” said Vinnie Tesoro, who trains Thunder Regent.

Tesoro, 33, is a native of Milan, Italy, whose career as a rock singer fizzled and whose career as a trainer was interrupted by a nine-month stint as a waiter.

Wilkinson bought Thunder Regent, a son of Thunder Puddles, at a yearling auction, paying only $1,500 because of the horse’s crooked front legs. He later sold Thunder Regent to his father, Douglas, and now the Canadians are 50-50 owners of the horse.

And don’t remind the Wilkinsons that Thunder Regent is a gelding. He has earned $466,897 but cannot be of any use to them as a stallion.

Usually, a horse is gelded because he is too high-strung to train. Thunder Regent, however, had been gelded as a foal, before David Wilkinson bought him.

He wasn’t gelded for any of the customary reasons. His breeders had fillies only at the farm and didn’t want to build a second paddock to accommodate one colt. So they gelded Thunder Regent and put him in with the fillies.

Wilkinson rode Thunder Regent to a poor finish when he was trying to break in as a jockey. That career consisted of 22 rides, Wilkinson said, with no victories. Now Wilkinson and his father have a one-horse stable, and Thunder Regent is the only horse Tesoro trains.

“Riding wasn’t for me,” David Wilkinson said. “It was too scary.”

In Toronto, long before Tesoro had taken to the racetrack, he envisioned a musical career. He and a guitarist honed their act for a year. Tesoro’s shtick was impersonating well-known singers. He says that he did a fair job of sounding like Alice Cooper, but there were no bookings.

“And it was hard on the vocal cords,” Tesoro said.

Tesoro could have lived at home, where his father offered him a job in the family dye-polishing business, but the guitarist had no housing. So Tesoro took him to Woodbine, in suburban Toronto, where he could live on the backstretch. Tesoro also stayed at the track, which was his introduction to racing. He qualified for his trainer’s license in 1987.

Last year, Thunder Regent was being prepared for the Breeders’ Cup Mile at Churchill Downs when he suffered a ligament injury while training for the Keeneland Breeders’ Cup Stakes. Tesoro’s one-horse stable was on hold, so he waited tables while waiting for Thunder Regent to come back.

Thunder Regent has been ridden most of the year by Sandy Hawley, who was inducted into the racing Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., in August, but Carlos Lopez has the mount Saturday. In Thunder Regent’s last start, the same Keeneland stake that he skipped last year, Hawley was unable to give Tesoro an early commitment, so he hired Lopez. Thunder Regent was second, three lengths behind Lotus Pool, who also is entered in the Mile.

Before the Keeneland race, Thunder Regent had run mostly in Canada this year, with three victories and three seconds in nine races. He hasn’t run Saturday’s distance in two years.

“How many races are written for a mile on grass?” David Wilkinson asked.

In Thunder Regent’s first victory this year, the King Edward Stakes at 1 1/8 miles at Woodbine in June, he paid $91.50 to win.

“I had $4 on him,” Tesoro said sheepishly. “We didn’t think he had much of a chance.”

Horse Racing Notes

Thunder Rumble, another son of Thunder Puddles, is entered in the Breeders’ Cup Classic on Saturday. . . . Sudden Hush, who has been coughing since running a temperature, was improved Monday, and trainer Darrell Vienna is more optimistic about his chances of running with his stablemate, Gilded Time, in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.

With Jerry Bailey riding Sultry Song in the Classic, Laffit Pincay has picked up the mount on Technology. Trainer Sonny Hine frequently used Pincay on his horses when they ran in California in the 1970s. . . . Gilded Time worked six furlongs Monday in 1:14 4/5. . . . A.P. Indy, one of the favorites for the Classic, worked in 1:13 3/5.