Best Pal Returns to Winning Form : Gold Cup: Gelding catches Bertrando in the stretch, moves to sixth on the all-time money list with earnings of $4.42 million.

In the elevator early Saturday at Hollywood Park, there was a chance meeting between trainers Charlie Whittingham and Gary Jones.

Whittingham, who has saddled 58 starters in the Hollywood Gold Cup, winning it a record eight times, was sitting this one out, saving Sir Beaufort for another day. Jones, despite 46 stakes victories at Hollywood Park, was a couple of hours away from running his first Gold Cup horse, Best Pal.

“Good luck,” Whittingham said.

“Good luck is right,” Jones said. “That’s what you need the most of in this game--good luck.”

Best Pal’s luck seemed to have gone bad, and for a long time neither Jones nor owners John and Betty Mabee nor jockey Kent Desormeaux could change it. In May, Desormeaux even agreed to ride another horse when Best Pal ran in the Hollywood Turf Handicap.

That opened the door for Jones and the Mabees to hire Corey Black, and on Saturday the 24-year-old jockey rode the most important winner in his career, guiding Best Pal to a 2 1/2-length victory over Bertrando that re-established the 5-year-old gelding as one of the best horses in the nation.

“This horse can be the best in the U.S.,” Black said. “It’s always pressure riding a horse like this, but it’s the kind of pressure I like to have. He’s coming into his old form at the right time. They’ve been saying that he isn’t as good as he was a year ago, but that’s hard to say. All I know is that he’s pretty good right now.”

Before his $412,500 victory in the $750,000 Gold Cup, Best Pal hadn’t won since April 11, 1992, running only five times because of injuries. Now the goal, in a campaign geared to bring him his first Eclipse Award, is the $3-million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita on Nov. 6. The Mabees will have to pay a supplemental fee of $360,000 to make him eligible.

His next race is the Pacific Classic at Del Mar on Aug. 21 , which at $1 million is even richer than the Gold Cup. Best Pal won the Pacific Classic in 1991.

“If we’re going to make the Classic, we’ve got to make some money,” Jones said. Best Pal has done that already. Saturday’s victory, his 13th in 28 starts, increased his earnings to $4,421,945, moving him from eighth to sixth all-time. All of the horses ahead of him--Alysheba, John Henry, Sunday Silence, Easy Goer and Unbridled--have been retired, with Alysheba holding the record at $6,679,242.

For the first three-eighths of a mile in Saturday’s 1 1/4-mile race, John Mabee had an uneasy feeling. “I thought to myself, ‘Oh, no, this is the Santa Anita Handicap all over again,’ ” Mabee said.

Best Pal won the 1992 Big ‘Cap, but in March his bid to repeat turned into a disaster--a fifth-place finish. Jones blamed himself for giving bad instructions to Desormeaux. John Mabee said that a horrible trip got his horse beat.

In the Gold Cup, Black had Best Pal on the fence almost from the start, even though he normally doesn’t run effectively on the inside because he gets dirt thrown in his face.

“Bertrando (the pacesetter) was off the rail,” Black said. “And there was no one on the fence. Our plan was to be on the outside, but since everybody was looking for me to be there, that must have made room for us on the inside.”

Under pressure from Potrillon for six furlongs, with Best Pal lurking in third place, Bertrando led all the way until Best Pal passed him with less than an eighth of a mile to run.

The fractions were 23, 46 2/5, 1:10 1/5 and 1:35, faster than jockey Alex Solis needed for a wire-to-wire upset on Bertrando.

“If only we had gotten away with some fractions that were a little slower,” Solis said. “It would have been nice if we could have gotten a 47 instead of 46. Still, he was very stubborn about giving up the lead. They’ll still say he’s not a mile-and-a-quarter horse, but I think it depends. If he can get away with an easy pace, he can handle that distance.”

Eddie Nahem, one of Bertrando’s owners, assumed that his horse wouldn’t be permitted to run off to an easy lead. “For 750 (thousand dollars), they’re not going to let you just walk,” Nahem said.

Black hit Best Pal once righthanded at the top of the stretch, and when he switched whip hands, he hit him nine more times before the wire.

“I thought I had Bertrando any time I wanted to,” Black said. “When I pushed the pedal, my horse gave me everything he had.”

The time was 2:00, well off Quack’s Gold Cup record of 1:58 1/5 in 1972 but close to what some of the stake’s recent winners have run.

Best Pal paid $4.20. Bertrando finished 5 1/2 lengths ahead of Major Impact, with Bertrando’s stablemates, Marquetry and Missionary Ridge, running fourth and fifth, respectively. Australia’s Rough Habit was never in contention and finished eighth in a 10-horse field. “I think the dirt in his face was a bit too much for him,” jockey Mick Dittman said. “You can work them in it, but’s it’s not like it is in a race. He’s lightened a bit since he’s been here, and he’s never been a large horse.”

Horse Racing Notes

The Gold Cup gave Best Pal at least one victory in all three years of the American Championship Racing Series. He won the Pacific Classic in 1991 and added the Santa Anita Handicap and the Oaklawn Handicap last year. . . . Best Pal’s groom, Martel Castaneda, received a new truck, donated by Hollywood Park and the California Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Assn. . . . One race Corey Black didn’t win Saturday was the one-furlong charity sprint among jockeys before the card. He finished second to Hector Torres as part of the “Jockeys Across America” day for the Don MacBeth Memorial Jockey Fund. . . . With two points for fifth in the Gold Cup, Missionary Ridge moved into third place in the ACRS standings. Devil His Due leads with 24 points, Pistols And Roses has 20 and next come Missionary Ridge, 17; Valley Crossing, 14; and Best Pal, West by West and Latin American at 10 apiece. The first three horses at the end of the nine-race series receive bonuses of $550,000, $225,000 and $125,000. Remaining races are the Iselin Handicap at Monmouth Park on July 24, the Pacific Classic on Aug. 21 and the Woodward at Belmont Park on Sept. 18. . . . Bertrando’s next race will be either the Iselin or the Pacific Classic. . . . Latin American, the Californian winner, was sixth in the Gold Cup. “I thought I might be third at the head of the stretch,” jockey Eddie Delahoussaye said. “He was going good until the eighth pole, but then he just flattened out.”