HOLLYWOOD PARK : Brought To Mind Ends Slump

For 16 months and 13 races, Brought To Mind had been unable to duplicate the form that made her the best older filly of the summer at Hollywood Park in 1991. The 5-year-old gray mare ran some strong races during the losing streak, but she still didn’t win any.

Now, with the breeding shed around the corner, Brought To Mind can go off to retirement with another victory, in the $110,200 Silver Belles Handicap at Hollywood Park on Sunday.

This was the first victory for Brought To Mind since July 14, 1991, when she won the Vanity Handicap at Hollywood. That same season, Brought To Mind also won the Hawthorne and Milady handicaps.

Trainer Ron McAnally couldn’t understand why Brought To Mind was the Silver Belles highweight, at 120 pounds, or why she went off at 10-1. Brought To Mind couldn’t end her losing streak earlier this year at Hollywood, but her races were solid--defeats by a nose and a head, and a fourth-place finish behind Paseana, Re Toss and Fowda.

Re Toss was also trying to reverse a losing streak in the Silver Belles, but it was extended to eight races when she was unable to make up eight lengths with a determined stretch run. Re Toss, who lost by a head, finished 1 3/4 lengths ahead of Interactive in third place. Cargo was fourth, another two lengths back, after leading until the final sixteenth of a mile. The 19-10 favorite, the McAnally-trained Race The Wild Wind, was sixth among eight horses after she twice banged her head against the gate before the start. Race The Wild Wind, only a 3-year-old, was second in the weights at 119 pounds.

Brought To Mind, timed in 1:42 3/5 for the 1 1/16 miles, now has 10 victories, six seconds and five thirds in 34 starts. One of her biggest paydays came after a third-place finish, which was worth $120,000 when she finished behind Dance Smartly and Versailles Treaty in the 1991 Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Churchill Downs.

Brought To Mind’s last six victories have come for Tadahiro Hotehama, the Japanese lensmaker who bought her from Lindsay Semple, another McAnally client, for $250,000 at the end of 1990. McAnally said Sunday that it hadn’t been decided whether Brought To Mind would be bred early next year in the United States or be sent to Japan.

Brought To Mind was bitten on the ear by an assistant starter before a Santa Anita race early in 1991 and never got over it. “Seeing the gate affected her after that,” McAnally said. “She’s a lovely horse around the barn, so it’s hard to imagine that she couldn’t handle the gate.”

Besides liking the running surface, McAnally attributes Brought To Mind’s better record at Hollywood Park to the considerations Gary Brinson, the track’s starter, has made for the mare.

“Gary’s a good starter,” McAnally said. “He lets this mare load last, so she doesn’t have to stand in the stall very long before he springs the latch.”

Although the Silver Belles is a relatively new stake, having been first run in 1981, McAnally already has a trove of pleasant memories from the race. He won the first running, with Happy Guess, and now he has won the last two. “After Paseana won this race last year, her career went on the upswing,” McAnally said. The first two times McAnally won the Silver Belles, he was voted the Eclipse Award for best trainer in those years, and he will be one of the favorites this year.

Pat Valenzuela was aboard Brought To Mind Sunday. Several riders have ridden the mare, with Valenzuela in the saddle for the three victories at Hollywood in 1991.

“We were sitting right off the pace and she was well in hand,” Valenzuela said. “I could see the other horses coming out of the corner of my eye. But my filly’s game, and she hung on tough.”

Valenzuela also won Saturday’s stake, with Stuka in the Hollywood Prevue Breeders’ Cup.

Adalberto Lopez, who has won with Re Toss, was reunited with the 5-year-old mare for the first time since June. Under 115 pounds, Re Toss was in the middle of the track at the finish, with Brought To Mind well off her, close to the fence.

“If you hit her with the left hand at the beginning, she doesn’t want to run,” Lopez said. “If you try to straighten her out, she doesn’t want to. I know I lost a lot of ground, but if I try to restrain her, she’s not going to run at all. I know this horse pretty good.”

Horse Racing Notes

Eddie Delahoussaye won Sunday’s last race with Rathsallah, for his 1,000th win at Hollywood Park. The only jockeys ahead of him on the list are Laffit Pincay, Bill Shoemaker, Chris McCarron and Johnny Longden. Pincay is No. 1 with 2,449 wins. . . . Pablo Santos of Brazil won the first race for his first U.S. victory.