HOLLYWOOD PARK : Toussaud Wins the American Against Males

As the jockeys were pulling up their horses after Sunday’s $216,000 American Handicap at Hollywood Park, Chris McCarron came alongside Kent Desormeaux.

“You didn’t take the inside?” McCarron said.

“Not!” Desormeaux yelled back.

A week ago, Flawlessly, with McCarron aboard, was handed the victory in the Beverly Hills Handicap when Desormeaux, riding the favored Jolypha, got his filly trapped on the fence in a four-horse field.

In the American, Desormeaux swung Toussaud, another Bobby Frankel-trained filly, to the outside for the stretch run and they scored a three-quarter-length victory over five males. Since 1938, when the American was first run, the only other filly to win the stake was Pink Pigeon in 1968.

Frankel, who had thrown his binoculars in disgust and stormed out of the track after the Beverly Hills, was able to kid with Desormeaux Sunday.

“I thought you had learned your lesson,” the trainer said to the jockey as he came off the track.

“I wasn’t going for any gopher holes today,” Desormeaux said.

Toussaud was a multiple stakes winner for trainer John Gosden in England last year, and since being sent to Frankel last fall she has continued to excel, although Frankel says she is the most difficult horse he’s ever trained. In the paddock before the American, Toussaud was such a handful that Desormeaux had to board the 4-year-old filly on the run.

Since running fourth and third in her first two starts in the United States, Toussaud has three consecutive stakes victories at Hollywood Park. She ran 1 1/8 miles on grass Sunday in 1:46 4/5, paying $4.60 as the favorite. With an eighth of a mile left, four horses, including the front-running Journalism, were in front of her, but Toussaud swept by them in the center of the track and won more convincingly than the margin indicates.

Man From Eldorado, who won the American a year ago in his first U.S. race, was second, 1 1/4 lengths ahead of Journalism, who had a neck on Bistro Garden at the wire. With Desormeaux three pounds overweight, Toussaud carried 114, four less than the high weight, Blaze O’Brien, who finished sixth.

Toussaud, a Kentucky-bred daughter of El Gran Senor and Image of Reality, earned $126,000 for breeder-owner Prince Khalid Abdullah. The prince also owns Jolypha, and after the riding debacle in the Beverly Hills, he was asked about keeping Desormeaux on Jolypha.

“The trainer can do what he wants,” was his answer, which was relayed to Frankel. “But if it were up to me, I would let him keep riding her, because I don’t think he will be making the same mistake again.”

Frankel doesn’t want to run Jolypha and Toussaud against each other, so at Del Mar he will probably run one of them in the Ramona Handicap for fillies and mares on Aug. 7, the other against males in the Eddie Read Handicap the next day.

Down the road for Jolypha, in Frankel’s opinion, is the $3-million Breeders’ Cup Classic, a dirt race at Santa Anita on Nov. 6. Jolypha ran for the first time in the United States in the Classic last year, running third at Gulfstream Park.

“I haven’t raced fillies against the boys--in fact, this is the first time I’m doing it,” Frankel said. “Even last year, if the decision had been up to me, I wouldn’t have run her in the Classic. But the decision turned out to be the right one, considering how well she ran.”

Meantime, Frankel will try to figure out how to make Toussaud more cooperative. Referring to the Louisiana track where he broke in, Desormeaux said Sunday: “I felt like I was back at Evangeline Downs. They (the trainers) don’t give you a leg up there. You have to jump on the horse by yourself.”

Horse Racing Notes

One of the horses that Hollywood Gold Cup winner Best Pal might have to beat in the Pacific Classic is Devil His Due. “It’s either the Pacific Classic, the Whitney or the Iselin,” trainer Allen Jerkens said after Devil His Due’s victory in the Suburban Handicap at Belmont Park. The $1-million Pacific Classic, which Best Pal won in 1991, is scheduled for Aug. 21 at Del Mar; the $500,000 Iselin Handicap is July 24 at Monmouth Park, and the $250,000 Whitney Handicap is Aug. 28 at Saratoga. The Iselin and the Whitney are both 1 1/8 miles, an eighth of a mile shorter than the Pacific Classic. The Iselin and the Pacific Classic are both part of the American Championship Racing Series, a nine-race competition that offers a $550,000 bonus to the overall winner. After six races, Devil His Due leads the standings with 24 points. Best Pal’s Gold Cup was his first appearance in this year’s series and he earned 10 points for his 2 1/2-length victory. Last year, Best Pal finished second to Strike The Gold in the series.

Knight Prospector, who broke her maiden in March of 1992 in a $32,000 claiming race at Santa Anita, is the 7-5 morning-line favorite in today’s Valkyr Handicap at Hollywood Park. Knight Prospector has won three in a row six of her last seven and seven of 12 overall. Bel’s Starlet, who was third in the Gamely Handicap, behind Toussaud and Gold Fleece, goes back to sprinting and is 5-2.