THOROUGHBRED RACING : Who Are the Best Horses of ‘93? There Seem to Be Few Shoo-Ins

The Eclipse Awards voters have faced some puzzling choices through the years--John Henry vs. Slew o’ Gold for 1984 horse of the year comes to mind--but the balloting for 1993’s top honors is the toughest ever.

The best 3-year-old colt might be Prairie Bayou, who broke down and was destroyed while trying to win the Belmont Stakes in June.

The best female turf horse, for the second consecutive year, could be Flawlessly, who ran ninth in the Breeders’ Cup Mile last Saturday.

The best sprinter might be Cardmania, who lost 17 consecutive races before he won two in a row in a span of three weeks at Santa Anita, including the Breeders’ Cup Sprint.

The best 2-year-old colt could still be Dehere, even though he ran eighth in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.

And those are the easy divisions. Wait until the voters get to horse of the year. No matter what happens in the Japan Cup, a $3.4-million race in Tokyo on Nov. 28, the horse-of-the-year decision is not going to be easy. The only certainty is that the winner will be a horse that races on grass.

The candidates are Lure, the best middle-distance male turf horse in about two decades; Kotashaan, who has won all but one of his races since mid-February, including the Breeders’ Cup Turf at Santa Anita; and, as an afterthought, Star Of Cozzene, who skipped the Breeders’ Cup but will face Kotashaan in Tokyo.

Richard Mandella, the trainer of Kotashaan, doesn’t believe that a race in Japan should help determine the North American horse of the year. Joe Hirsch, the executive columnist of the Daily Racing Form and one of the organizers of the Eclipse Awards program that began in 1971, agreed that the Japan Cup shouldn’t be a factor. “These are North American horses we’re considering, and they should be judged on what they do in North American races,” said Hirsch, who is less emotionally involved than Mandella.

There are no Eclipse voting rules, only a set of guidelines probably left behind in a closet in New York when the Thoroughbred Racing Assn. moved to the boondocks of Maryland a few years ago. This time the voters would ignore the guidelines, anyway, because the Breeders’ Cup didn’t give them enough information--Lure and Kotashaan both won impressively while Star Of Cozzene stayed in his stall at Hollywood Park--and the Japan Cup could clarify the three-cornered dilemma.

If Kotashaan wins the Japan Cup, many voters who favor Lure would probably switch to Mandella’s horse. But if Star Of Cozzene wins in Tokyo, the election would be sent back to square one, a tight three-way battle that would likely be won by a horse not getting a simple majority of the vote. If neither Kotashaan nor Star Of Cozzene wins the Japan Cup--there will be a large field, including Urban Sea, the 4-year-old filly who won the Arc de Triomphe in Paris last October--Lure would become a slight favorite for the Eclipse.

Before Kotashaan went on the rampage that carried him into the Breeders’ Cup, Star Of Cozzene beat him three consecutive races last winter, once at Hollywood Park at the end of 1992 and twice at Santa Anita this year. Lure and Star Of Cozzene split four decisions this year, Lure winning at the shorter distances, and, instead of meeting for a fifth time, in the Arlington Million in August, Star Of Cozzene cantered home after Lure was scratched because of the soft ground.

No matter what happens in Japan, Star Of Cozzene might be penalized by some voters for not running in the Breeders’ Cup. The knock against Kotashaan is that he didn’t leave California in compiling his outstanding record. Lure will lose votes because he’s a one-dimensional horse who couldn’t win beyond 1 1/8 miles.

The voters are members of the National Turf Writers’ Assn., racing secretaries from most of the country’s tracks and representatives of the Racing Form. Last year, 147 turf writers, 36 racing secretaries and 95 from the Form voted. The disparity in the number of voters from each group is corrected by bloc voting; to win a championship, a horse must have a plurality from at least two of the three organizations.

Kotashaan is going to be favored in the 1 1/2-mile Japan Cup because of his year-long consistency and a proclivity for a distance of ground. But Mandella knows how difficult this assignment is. The horse must be shipped to Tokyo, spend time in quarantine and then run on an unfamiliar course only three weeks after the Breeders’ Cup.

“This will be very demanding,” Mandella said. “Most horses shouldn’t try to do it. But my horse had a good breather last summer, and maybe that will help him now.”

At the end of 1982, John Henry, horse of the year the year before, was sent to Tokyo for the second running of the Japan Cup. The trip was not unrelated to the fact that the 7-year-old gelding’s owner, New Yorker Sam Rubin, was in the business of importing bicycles from Japan. It was a ghastly undertaking. John Henry had run in New Jersey only two weeks before the Tokyo race, and not well at that. In Japan, he lost more than 100 pounds in quarantine, spent much of that time off his feet and barely completed the race, beating two runners in a 15-horse field.

Kotashaan and Star Of Cozzene were both purchased by different groups of Japanese investors late in the year, Star Of Cozzene for an announced $3 million and Kotashaan probably for even more.

Their new owners won’t throw back the horse-of-the-year title if they win it--A.P. Indy’s Japanese co-owner, Tomonori Tsumaki, was happy to travel to Los Angeles to accept his horse’s title for 1992--but the ultimate for them is the big race in their own backyard.

Star Of Cozzene was withheld from the Breeders’ Cup for all the right reasons: In a three-turn race, he would have been compromised by Santa Anita’s tight turns; he would have been running on hard turf, whereas soft ground suits him better; and, not having been nominated as a foal, it would have cost $240,000 to supplement him into the Turf field. More than all that, though, the Japanese wanted a fresh horse for Tokyo and didn’t want to subject their horse to the hardships that Kotashaan must endure in Japan.

Another consideration for Kotashaan and Star Of Cozzene is that race-day medication is prohibited in Japan. Despite being certified bleeders in the United States, they will be unable to run on Lasix. Kotashaan has run on Lasix in all nine of his races this year. Star Of Cozzene has run on Lasix wherever it was permitted, but without the diuretic in New York he was only a .500 horse, winning two of four starts.

The bleeder issue will also affect the vote for 2-year-old colt because undefeated Brocco won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile while Dehere bled from the lungs in running eighth. Because of the bleeding, some voters might consider Dehere’s poor performance a throw-out race. But that’s another story.

Horse Racing Notes

A horse-of-the-year sampler comes by way of Thoroughbred Racing Communications’ weekly poll. There were 37 voters, some of them not eligible for Eclipse voting, and the result was 19-17-1, with Kotashaan, Star Of Cozzene and Bertrando ranked 1-2-3. . . .Luazur, third in the Breeders’ Cup Turf, will run in the Japan Cup, with Gary Stevens riding, and Fraise, fourth at Santa Anita, is a probable for Tokyo. . . .The Oak Tree meeting at Santa Anita closes Sunday with the $400,000 Yellow Ribbon for fillies and mares. Verveine, the French horse who was unable to draw in off the also-eligible list for the Breeders’ Cup Turf, will be one of the favorites.