A Sure Thing at the Track? Bet on Jones to Be Nervous

Fires dot the foothills like candles on a birthday cake as Gary Jones, a trainer, follows a pathway past the paddock of Santa Anita, gazing up at the mountains beyond. The horses can sniff the distant smoke. They fidget in their stalls. A straw-filled barn can be an unsettling place when the word fire is being spoken, and although the animals and grounds are far enough away to seem safe, the vicinity’s debris is such that, next morning, the racetrack will be closed for the day.

With the world’s richest horse race, the $3-million Breeders’ Cup Classic, little more than a week away, there was enough for Jones to worry about without envisioning Santa Anita going up in flames. His staggeringly popular horse, Best Pal, was scheduled to be vanned a few miles from Hollywood Park and then reacquainted late Thursday morning with the familiar surroundings of Arcadia, where he is considered by thousands to be the beauty of all beasts.

Gary Jones, worried?

Poor guy can’t help it. It’s his nature.

“I’m wound tighter than a three-day clock,” Jones says.

He fretted himself into a mild heart attack last February, nothing like the massive one that felled his father, Farrell Jones, that terrible day 19 years ago at the height of Farrell’s reign as one of California’s most successful trainers, yet still alarming enough to keep Gary confined to a hospital bed for five days.

He promised the doctor he would slow down. But four days later he was back at work and racing a horse with the absurdly apropos name of Cardiac. He also promised the doctor he would quit smoking. A cigarette pack, though, remains inside his shirt pocket to this day.

He pulls out a smoke on a smoky morning and says, “I’m trying. Really, I am.”

Even sucked on a pacifier for a while there--really, he did. His dad had cautioned Gary not to work himself into a coronary as he had. For a number of years, in fact, Farrell Jones took pains to discourage his son from getting into the racing business at all, even though he, himself, had ridden horses successfully at Santa Anita at an age, 14, when he was only marginally older than some of his mounts.

“My dad never wanted me around,” Gary admits, so for three years he muddled his way through college where, he remembers with a horse laugh, he more or less majored in golf. Then came the 1974 heart attack that laid up his father at an early age, much the same as it eventually would Gary, who is 48. Gary began training the thoroughbreds while his father began taking care of himself at a farm in Hemet (where he still lives), taking three-mile daily constitutionals and becoming a vegetarian.

End result was a fine career plus a funny gag for Gary, who says: “He wanted me to have something more stable, but I got the stable.”

And he also has Best Pal, the wonder horse, the all-time leading money winner among California-breds, a gallant gelding that owners John and Betty Mabee of Golden Eagle Farm entrusted to Jones two years ago after taking the reins away from Ian Jory.

It was not long thereafter that Best Pal began to run away with blue ribbon after blue ribbon, $200,000 San Fernando Stakes, $500,000 Charles H. Strub Stakes, $750,000 Hollywood Gold Cup, $1-million Santa Anita Handicap, building a following that treated him like, well, a star.

“Everything, you name it, we’ve seen it,” Gary says, turning to Joan, his wife.

“Fan mail,” she mentions.

“A kid with a license plate that says BEST PAL.”

“Someone wrote asking us for a lock of his hair.”

The horse means everything to the Joneses and so do the Mabees. The reputation Best Pal’s boss has as one of racing’s most demanding owners is a misleading and distasteful one to Jones, to whom John Mabee has been not so much an employer as the best of pals. At a time long ago when Gary was doing more snorting than his horses, it was Mabee who helped him through his cocaine habit with the promise of work once he straightened himself out.

Then there was the property Gary and Joan bought on spec that became a house of horrors, threatening them with millions in debt and the specter of foreclosure as loan companies bit the dust. Without even laying eyes on the house, Mabee asked little more than: “How much do you need?” Within hours, the Joneses had the wolves from the bank off their backs.

“Let me tell you, if it wasn’t for John Mabee, you wouldn’t even hear of Gary Jones today,” Gary says. “I’d fight a dragon for him.”

No need. Train a horse, that’s all he need do. Only the fiscal risk remains great, Best Pal’s owners being obligated to pony up $360,000 in supplemental fees merely to enter the Breeders’ Cup race. For not having been nominated as a weanling for a paltry $500, this is the price a horse owner must pay to reach the starting gate. Best Pal must run no worse than third Nov. 6 to make enough money to break even.

So, yes, Gary worries.

“It’s a 100% pure gamble,” he says. “There’s a lot of burden on my shoulders. On the other hand, I feel the pressure a lot worse when the horse is an overwhelming favorite. There’s such a great field in the Classic that the only way he’s going to be an overwhelming favorite is if everybody here bets Best Pal out of pure love, which, the more I think about how people feel about this horse, is entirely possible. What can I tell you? He’s a horse in a million.”

Breeders’ Cup Pre-Entries

Horses pre-entered for the seven-race, $10-million Breeders’ Cup, which will be held Saturday, Nov. 6 at Santa Anita. A maximum of 14 horses are allowed in each race, with a point system and an international committee determining who runs. The first 14 eligible horses in each race are listed in alphabetical order. Horses that are also eligible are listed in order of preference. The fields will be finalized and post positions drawn next Wednesday .

SPRINT PURSE: $1 million. DISTANCE: 6 furlongs. Alydeed, Apelia, Birdonthewire, Cardmania, Catrail, Demaloot Demashoot, Fly So Free, Gilded Time, Gold Spring, Meafara, Music Merci, Sayyedati, Surprise Offer, Thirty Slews. Also eligible : Monde Bleu, Now Listen, Binalong, Wild Harmony, Anjiz, Kashani, Superstrike, Harlan, Arches Of Gold, Cargo, Plantagenet.

JUVENILE FILLIES PURSE: $1 million. DISTANCE: 1 1/16 miles. Astas Foxy Lady, Coup de Genie, Heavenly Prize, Meadow Rendezvous, Phone Chatter, Rhapsodic, Sardula, Stellar Cat, Tricky Code.

DISTAFF PURSE: $1 million. DISTANCE: 1 1/8 miles. Dispute, Hollywood Wildcat, Jolypha, Magical Maiden, Party Cited, Paseana, Re Toss, Sky Beauty, Supah Gem, Verveine.

MILE PURSE: $1 million. SURFACE: Turf. Barathea, Bigstone, Buckhar, Flawlessly, Fourstars Allstar, Kingmambo, Lech, Lure, Maryland Moon, Paradise Creek, Ski Paradise, Toussaud, Visible Gold, Wolfhound. Also eligible: Catrail, Johann Quatz, Alydeed.

JUVENILE PURSE: $1 million. DISTANCE: 1 1/16 miles. Blumin Affair, Brocco, Creston, Dehere, Dove Hunt, Ferrara, Flying Sensation, Hot Number, Ramblin Guy, Shepherd’s Field, Tabasco Cat, Winning Pact.

TURF PURSE: $2 million. DISTANCE: 1 1/2 miles. Apple Tree, Bien Bien, Dernier Empereur, Fairy Garden, Fraise, Hatoof, Hernando, Interpidity, Johann Quatz, Kotashaan, Luazur, Opera House, Solar Splendor, Wemyss Bight. Also eligible: Serrant, Muhtarram, Verveine, Cozzene’s Prince, Kissin Kris.

CLASSIC PURSE: $3 million. DISTANCE: 1 1/4 miles. Arcanques, Bertrando, Best Pal, Brunswick, Colonial Affair, Devil His Due, Ezzoud, Hernando, Kissin Kris, Marquetry, Miner’s Mark, Missionary Ridge, Peteski, Wallenda. Also eligible: Diazo, Grand Jewel, Jolypha, Pleasant Tango.