HOLLYWOOD PARK : Valenzuela Set Down Five Days for Ride in Stretch of Turf Cup

The fallout from Sunday’s controversial $500,000 Hollywood Turf Cup is that Madeleine Paulson, the owner of the disqualified first-place finisher, won’t appeal the stewards’ decision, and that Pat Valenzuela, who rode her horse, has received a five-day suspension.

Fraise, Valenzuela’s mount, won the race by a nose over Bien Bien. But their order of finish was reversed after the Hollywood Park stewards spent 11 minutes--an extraordinary amount of time for a review--considering their own inquiry into the stretch run and evaluating a foul claim by Valenzuela against Bien Bien and his jockey, Chris McCarron, for alleged crowding on the far turn.

The stewards ruled that Fraise drifted out and bumped Bien Bien at least twice in the final sixteenth of a mile, and they disallowed Valenzuela’s objection, saying that replays of the incident on the turn were inconclusive.

Not unexpectedly, Valenzuela received a suspension for five racing days from the three Hollywood stewards on Wednesday. After the race, steward Pete Pedersen had said that Valenzuela’s left-handed whipping of Fraise through the stretch contributed to the decision to disqualify, which was a tipoff that Valenzuela would be grounded.

Valenzuela’s suspension begins Saturday at Hollywood Park and, because of the holiday schedule, will run through Saturday, Dec. 26, which is opening day at Santa Anita. There is a national reciprocity policy that will also prevent Valenzuela from riding at other tracks during the suspension.

In most racing jurisdictions, Valenzuela would not be eligible to ride in the two major stakes at Hollywood Park this weekend, but because of California’s designated-race rule, he can compete in the $250,000 Starlet on Saturday and Sunday’s $500,000 Hollywood Futurity. Valenzuela has a good mount in the Futurity in Stucka, who will be an odds-on favorite in a small field. Stucka’s owner is Allen Paulson, whose wife campaigns Fraise. Under a one-year contract that expires on Dec. 28, but which will probably be renewed, Valenzuela is Allen Paulson’s stable rider.

Paulson admires Valenzuela for his riding skills, but he is also protective of the 30-year-old jockey. In the immediate aftermath of Sunday’s disqualification, an angry Paulson suggested that what partly led to Fraise’s disqualification was the stewards’ dislike for Valenzuela. Despite his success--he has ridden a Kentucky Derby winner and six Breeders’ Cup winners, four of them in the last two years for the Paulsons--Valenzuela’s drug trouble in the 1980s had stewards in California and elsewhere up to their eyebrows in paperwork.

Asking a steward if he is biased about a jockey is a loaded question, and the Hollywood Park officials frowned Sunday when Paulson’s allegations were brought up.

A year ago, however, Valenzuela’s attorneys caught local stewards using a double standard when the lawyers attempted to obtain a delay of another five-day suspension.

The attorneys, Scott Zimmermann and Richard Craigo, asked that Valenzuela’s suspension be postponed long enough for the jockey to ride Dinard, Paulson’s horse, in the opening-day Malibu Stakes at Santa Anita. The attorneys cited an instance at Del Mar the previous summer in which the stewards delayed a suspension of Chris McCarron for a day, enabling him to ride in a $300,000 race at Arlington International in suburban Chicago.

“We were told (by the Hollywood Park stewards) that the stewards at Del Mar were a different group,” Craigo said. “My argument was that no matter who the stewards were at either place, they were all working under California Horse Racing Board rules and regulations.”

Zimmermann obtained a court stay that enabled Valenzuela to ride Dinard, anyway, and he served the five days later in the Santa Anita season.

Dave Samuel, who was a steward at Del Mar in 1991 and who is working at Hollywood Park, recalled the McCarron ruling Wednesday.

“We took some heat over it at the time,” Samuel said. “The trainer (John Russell) of the horse (Stark South) that McCarron was scheduled to ride in Chicago came to us and said that he wouldn’t be able to get another top rider if he lost McCarron. So for the best interests of the owner of the horse and racing, we held off on the suspension for a day and Chris rode at Arlington.”

Then Samuel added:

“We’ll never do it again. It was one of those things that seemed like the right thing to do at the time, but later it became obvious that it wasn’t the right thing.”

Neither Dinard nor Stark South won.

If Valenzuela does not appeal his suspension, he will miss the $100,000 Dahlia Handicap on closing day at Hollywood Park on Dec. 24 and the $100,000 Malibu at Santa Anita two days later.

Horse Racing Notes

Winning horses have been disqualified from richer races than the $500,000 Hollywood Turf Cup. Earlier this year, Wiorno won the $1-million Rothmans International at Woodbine by half a length and was moved to third place by the stewards for interference. . . . The victory went to Snurge, after the Ontario Racing Commission rejected an appeal by the owner of Wiorno. . . . In the second Breeders’ Cup race ever run, at Hollywood Park in 1984, Fran’s Valentine was disqualified after a half-length victory in the $1-million Juvenile Fillies. The stewards moved Outstandingly from second to first and dropped Fran’s Valentine to 10th after she caused a chain reaction by crowding a horse from the outside at the top of the stretch. Pat Valenzuela rode Fran’s Valentine.

The Hollywood Park season is nearing a close with four of the top jockeys in the country out of action. Chris McCarron and Eddie Delahoussaye are on vacation, Kent Desormeaux is injured and Valenzuela has been suspended. . . . On Wednesday, David Flores also was missing because of a family illness. He is expected to return today. . . . Mickey Walls, the Canadian jockey who was voted the Eclipse Award for best apprentice in North America in 1991, began riding at Hollywood Park on Wednesday.