A Fan’s Cup Runneth Over With Highlights

Now that was a day at the races. Glorious horses at full gallop in the noonday sun. Furious finishes that came down to outstretched necks and flaring nostrils. No one harmed, man or beast. And a climax befitting a children’s fable, a wild ride by a 133-to-1 underhorse who wasn’t so much a longshot as a longer shot.

The 10th-anniversary party of the Breeders’ Cup was all thrills and no spills. Jockey Jerry Bailey won a classic Classic on a horse whose name he couldn’t pronounce. Laffit Pincay rode his seventh winner and Kent Desormeaux broke his maiden. Two brothers from a family that runs the Chanel perfume empire ran a horse who came out smelling like a rose and a man who produces James Bond movies produced a horse who left his enemies shaken and his audience stirred.

You could shoot a photo of every finish, because each was as captivating as the last. If there ever has been a better Breeders’ Cup than the one Saturday at Santa Anita, please show us the pictures because we cannot remember when or where it was.

This one gave us Eddie Delahoussaye, that most sure-handed of horse-handlers, dropping his whip when he needed it most, but bouncing along on Hollywood Wildcat anyway and winning with little else to do with his hands but keep his fingers crossed.

This one gave us Dehere, sometimes described as the Next Secretariat, running like de tortoise and losing in a shocking upset to Brocco, who as a result automatically gets to become the new Next Secretariat.

This one gave us Mike Smith, the nation’s leading rider, swerving around a curve as though he were headed for a 210 freeway off-ramp, then luring Lure back to the pack and winning another Cup race so impressively that next year--unless the horse puts himself out to pasture like that Bull from Chicago--he gets to go for the three-peat.

And this one gave us Opera House, a horse from the old sod of England who faded on the young sod of California because, as his trainer, Michael Stoute, explained later: “He just didn’t have enough petrol.”

Foreign import of the day, far and away, was Arcangues, who before his race did not seem to have two people in Arcadia willing to wager two bucks on him to finish first on a carousel, much less in the world’s richest race, the $3-million Breeders’ Cup Classic. As eyeballs from clubhouse to infield to paddock went boinggg right out of their sockets, the 5-year-old chestnut came bolting out of the blue like Black Beauty or the Black Stallion or some horse out of a storybook, leaving favored horses eating dirt and leading jockey Gary Stevens to ask, as he dismounted the beaten Bertrando, the ultimate question of the 1993 Breeders’ Cup:

“Where did that (son of a gun) come from?”

France. He only seemed to have come from outer space, Gary, like the Coneheads. But this was a horse that was unfamiliar to most of the Americans among the tens of thousands in the Santa Anita grandstand, never having made a run for, you know, the Kentucky Chapeau. Here he was side by side with horses such as Best Pal and the Kentucky Derby runners Diazo, Kissin Kris and Wallenda, and why was he listed on the tote board at a hopeless 99-to-1? Because tote boards don’t tote any higher.

Arcangues paid $18.20 to show, $54.40 to place and Blank Check to win.

“I didn’t even understand the instructions in the paddock,” said Bailey, who rode the winner under the handicap of speaking English. “I wasn’t even sure how to pronounce his name.”

The end of a perfect day. Jockey wins world’s richest race on horse he calls, “Hey, you!”

Saturday began with another multicultural victory in the Sprint competition for a horse called Cardmania, his dapper French owner Jean Couvercelle and his Dudley Moore-esque trainer Derek Meredith. Their horse was a winner by a nose over Meafara, a horse with a name that could have inspired some funny jokes from Woody Allen.

Next came the Juvenile Fillies, a race not named after the Philadelphia baseball team. In this one, Sardula came within a mane’s hair of giving Delahoussaye his second triumph in two tries.Though Eddie D kept a grip on his whip, he was caught at the wire by Phone Chatter, one of trainer Richard Mandella’s two Cup-day success tales.

The Cowan family, which over the years has bought up 7,500 acres of citrus groves, apartment buildings, Florida’s famed Diplomat Hotel and pieces of Broadway shows, also invested in a nice little horse named Hollywood Wildcat who kept going forward even after his jockey stopped whacking him. Eddie D didn’t need the staff to win the Distaff. He held off not only Jenny Craig’s calorie-counting horse Paseana as well as a longshot called Supah Gem who probably gets laughed at in the barn by Arcangues’ friends now for being only 90-to-1.

Brocco took the Juvenile. He is owned by Albert (Cubby) Broccoli, 84, whose ancestors crossed cauliflower with an Italian vegetable and gave the offspring the family name, much to the delight of great chefs and the distress of George Bush. Broccoli is best known as producer of the James Bond movies, and an inquiry might be forthcoming at Santa Anita that his horse squirted oil from a secret compartment designed by British intelligence.

For the Turf race, the brothers Wertheimer, Jacques and Gerard, part of the Chanel fragrance empire, saddled up their Kotashaan and rewarded him for winning by selling him to the Japanese. The horse possibly thinks this is the only thing about the family business that stinks.

All in all, it was a full day of racing, seven rides for seven prizes. Next year’s Breeders’ Cup could turn out even better. I make it 133-to-1 it won’t.