Frankel Is All Set for a Classic Run : Horse racing: The trainer, winless in 16 Breeders’ Cup tries, is expected to have three-horse entry.

If it had been mentioned several years ago that Bobby Frankel was zero for life in Breeders’ Cup races, the not-yet-mellow trainer might have bitten the observer’s head off.

But Frankel calmly acknowledged recently that he is winless with 16 Breeders’ Cup starters and said, “At least I’ve come close a few times. But yes, I’d like to win one.”

Frankel, the leading trainer in the nation this year with about $7 million in purses, still has his acerbic moments, but he seems to pick his spots. One of those sensitive moments was at the 1990 Kentucky Derby, which Frankel tried to win with two horses, one of them a maiden, Pendleton Ridge.

A reporter had poked fun at this, and at the post-position draw, two days before the Derby, Frankel spotted him and gave him a tongue-lashing laced with four-letter words.

“My owner read that (story) and called me,” Frankel shouted. “He wanted to know what we were doing in the race.”

Pendleton Ridge ran 13th, and several weeks later, on the backstretch at Hollywood Park, Frankel saw the same reporter for the first time since the Derby.

“Hey, listen,” Frankel said. “I read the whole story when I got home, and it was different than I thought. What can I say? I’m sorry for what I said.”

Win or lose in Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita, Frankel still might win his first Eclipse Award for training. Last year, Ron McAnally won the award, Frankel finishing second in the voting, and Frankel’s biggest client, Juddmonte Farms, won the Eclipse for outstanding owner.

Juddmonte Farms is Prince Khalid Abdullah, 56, a brother-in-law of King Fahd and a member of Saudi Arabia’s royal family.

Coming from New York in 1972, Frankel became Southern California’s claiming king, winning cheap races by the hundreds. By the 1980s, he had improved his stock, and in 1982 he took a 4-year-old colt, Mehmet, and beat John Henry, the 1981 horse of the year, twice in less than a month. Mehmet carried 12 pounds less than John Henry in the first race and 11 less in the second.

Still, Frankel’s stakes-winning operation was marred by on-and-off associations with several owners. When Abdullah chose him in 1991, Frankel’s barn moved up in stability and depth of horses.

It has been said that Frankel was hired by Juddmonte after a computer rating of several trainers, but that is an oversimplification, said John Chandler, who heads Juddmonte’s Kentucky interests. Abdullah owns three farms and 1,800 acres there.

Chandler said that the computer simply narrowed Juddmonte’s West Coast search to six trainers--Charlie Whittingham, Wayne Lukas, Richard Mandella, Ron McAnally, Neil Drysdale and Frankel.

“All of these trainers were well established, and we knew them by their reputations, if not personally,” Chandler said. “For something of this importance, the prince was going to make the ultimate decision.”

Frankel might not have known it at the time, but his work with one horse was going to determine whether he would get the Juddmonte business.

“We sent him Exbourne, a horse who had had his problems,” Chandler said. “We wanted to see what Bobby could do with him.”

In the 1991 Hollywood Turf Handicap, Exbourne was balky at the starting gate, then rallied from last place and won the $500,000 race by beating a field that included Itsallgreektome, Prized and a Frankel entrant for another owner, Missionary Ridge. Exbourne then won two other stakes that year, including the $500,000 Caesars International Handicap at Atlantic City.

There was a bittersweet end for Frankel with Exbourne. In 1992, four days before he was to attempt a repeat in the Hollywood Turf Handicap, Exbourne broke down during a workout at Santa Anita, suffering ruptured ligaments in his right foreleg.

Surgery repaired the leg, but a life-threatening circulation problem developed in the other foreleg. The injury was the kind that had led to the death of Ruffian, and the hoof condition was the kind that had killed Secretariat.

Exbourne tried standing on three legs for almost a year, going from track to track as Frankel continued to care for him. Last April, the 7-year-old son of Explodent went home to Kentucky, where he will stand at stud at Juddmonte next year.

Frankel won the 1992 Hollywood Turf Handicap with Juddmonte’s Quest For Fame, but as the horse crossed the finish line, the trainer turned to Chandler and said, “Wouldn’t Exbourne have slaughtered this bunch?”

Frankel, 52, was to have saddled two Juddmonte horses Saturday, Toussaud in the Mile and Jolypha in the Distaff, but Jolypha suffered a career-ending leg injury in training on Thursday. Frankel’s best Breeders’ Cup chance is in the Classic with Bertrando.

Frankel will have two other entrants in the Classic--Marquetry, whom he and longtime friends Morley and Dale Engelson bought from Juddmonte, and Missionary Ridge, who gave Frankel one of his biggest victories when he won the $1-million Pacific Classic at 24-1 odds at Del Mar last year.

Frankel had his best Breeders’ Cup finishes in 1986, when Theatrical lost by a neck to Manila in the Turf at Santa Anita, and in 1991, when Val Des Bois lost by 1 1/4 lengths to Opening Verse in the Mile.

Val Des Bois was owned by Edmund Gann, the Rancho Santa Fe businessman who has been one of Frankel’s most successful clients. They teamed to win the Japan Cup with Pay The Butler in 1988, and the popular Wickerr, claimed by Frankel for Gann for $50,000, won four stakes at Del Mar in 1981-82 and now has a stake named after him at the seaside track.

Long Overdue

Bobby Frankel , one of horse racing’s most successful trainers, is winless in 16 Breeders’ Cup races. A look at how those horses fared:

Year Horse Race Finish 1984 Fighting Fit Sprint 3rd Night Mover Mile 8th 1985 Al Mamoon Mile *2nd Fighting Fit Sprint 4th Sharannpour Turf 14th 1986 Al Mamoon Mile 6th Theatrical Turf 2nd 1988 Ruhlmann Sprint 9th 1991 Filago Turf 13th Marquetry Classic 7th Val Des Bois Mile 2nd 1992 Defensive Play Classic 6th Marquetry Classic 11th Val Des Bois Mile 4th Luthier Enchanteur Mile 6th Quest For Fame Turf 3rd

*Ran third, placed second after disqualification.