HOLLYWOOD PARK : Lightly Raced Brocco Will Try to Stay on Track for an Eclipse

The worst-kept secret at last month’s Breeders’ Cup was Brocco, the talented but inexperienced colt who was running in the $1-million Juvenile at Santa Anita.

In nine years, no horse had won the Juvenile with as few as two preps. But it didn’t deter California bettors, who had seen Brocco begin his career with a smashing victory at Del Mar in late August and validate his potential with another rouser at Santa Anita on Oct. 7, a month before the Breeders’ Cup. There was still a noblesse oblige to the betting on the Juvenile, with Dehere, the seasoned multiple stakes winner from the East, going off at 7-10, but Brocco was the strong second choice at 3-1.

With Dehere bleeding badly from the lungs during the race and settling for eighth place in the worst performance of his career, the East-West showdown didn’t happen. Brocco remained undefeated by coasting to a five-length victory. That matched Arazi’s record, set in 1991, for the biggest margin by a Juvenile winner.

“There were a lot of questions about this colt before the race,” said Gary Stevens, who has ridden Brocco in all three of his victories. “But he answered them all. It was his first time in a stake. It was the first time he had been around two turns. It was the first time he ran in front of a big crowd (55,130). It was the first time he’s experience dirt hitting him in the face. And it was the first time he had come from off the pace.”

Dehere, winner of four stakes, including a rare sweep of the three races for 2-year-old colts at Saratoga, will still get some support for the divisional Eclipse Award, but the voters will be hard-pressed to ignore Brocco’s big performance on the big day. “My horse hasn’t done anything wrong,” said Randy Winick, Brocco’s trainer, “and he didn’t just win (the Juvenile), he won it convincingly.”

Instead of sitting back and waiting for Brocco’s Eclipse votes to come in, Winick is expected to run his colt one more time this year, in the $500,000 Hollywood Futurity on Sunday.

“Running him in the Futurity has nothing to do with the Eclipse Award,” Winick said. “I think he’s already done enough to deserve that. It’s just that this horse is very good right now, the next race for him at Santa Anita is too far off and he’s had a light campaign compared to some of the horses he faced in the Breeders’ Cup.”

If Brocco bypassed the Futurity, which at 1 1/16 miles is the same distance as the Juvenile, the next spot wouldn’t come until the San Vicente Stakes at Santa Anita on Feb. 13.

“I wouldn’t want to put this horse on ice for that long,” Winick said. “The San Vicente would be more than three months between races. I’ve seen horses get sour on you when they don’t get the chance to run more often than that.”

There’s rain in the forecast for the weekend, but Winick said that an off track shouldn’t change his mind about running Brocco.

The downside to running in the Futurity is that a loss by Brocco would give Dehere’s Eclipse backers an extra reason to vote for the Eastern colt. The Breeders’ Cup winner has gone on to the 2-year-old championship most of the time. The exceptions have been Forty Niner, who won the title in 1987 without running in the Breeders’ Cup; and Easy Goer, whose overall record was so solid--a lot like Dehere’s--that most of the voters were willing to overlook his second-place finish against Is It True in the 1988 Juvenile.

“We want to do what’s right for the horse,” Winick said.

That’s on anyone’s list of top five racing cliches, but in this case it fits. In other words, preparedness for the 1994 Kentucky Derby is more important to Winick than a safety-first approach to the 1993 Eclipse Award. If trainers were also historians, the last thing they would want to win with a 2-year-old is an Eclipse, because there’s a long-running curse attached. Since Spectacular Bid won the 1978 juvenile title and the 1979 Derby, 14 consecutive divisional champions have failed to win the Derby. Half of them didn’t even make it to the race.

A trainer for 20 years, Winick, 44, has won his first Breeders’ Cup race, and he’s saying that he has another Kentucky Derby hopeful besides Brocco in his eight-horse barn at Santa Anita. The No. 2 colt is Duca, but he hasn’t exactly been a backstretch secret, either. When the son of Fappiano broke his maiden in his second start last month, the win price was $3, and when Duca scored a come-from-behind victory at 1 1/16 miles on grass last week at Hollywood, the payoff was $3.60.

Winick wanted to run Duca on dirt at Hollywood earlier in the meet, but when only two other horses were entered and the race wasn’t run, the trainer opted for the grass race.

“I think Duca’s a future stake horse, but he’s not as good as the other horse yet,” Winick said. “He’s a little behind, and he’s greener. But he should get better the longer the races are.”

Winick trains for Cubby and Dana Broccoli, who paid $215,000 at auction for Cubby’s namesake and $360,000 for Duca. Brocco, a son of Kris S., was purchased in March at the Barretts 2-year-olds-in-training sale at Pomona and was the only publicly bought horse to win a Breeders’ Cup race this year.

Cubby Broccoli, 84, has produced many of the James Bond movies and was home, weak with flu but watching on television, when Brocco won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. With Brocco and his stablemate, there figure to be other days.

Horse Racing Notes

Pat Valenzuela, scheduled to ride four horses at Hollywood Park on Wednesday, was interviewed by the stewards before the races and given permission to take the day off because of illness. Valenzuela, who called in sick Sunday, missing the chance to ride three horses that won, including Fraise in the $500,000 Hollywood Turf Cup, told the stewards that he planned to take off Friday, Saturday and Sunday to recover from flu and would probably resume riding Monday, the last day of the meeting. Valenzuela’s agent, Nick Cosato, dropped the jockey Monday, saying that Valenzuela’s third stakes absence in three months put him in an embarrassing position with their clients. Tony Matos reportedly has become Valenzuela’s new agent. Tom Ward, one of the stewards, said that they are satisfied with the way Valenzuela has handled his recent absences. In the last four years, Valenzuela has been suspended twice after testing positive for cocaine. Other jockeys missing Wednesday were Eddie Delahoussaye (flu), Chris McCarron (dental appointment) and Corey Nakatani (personal reasons). Martin Pedroza didn’t feel well and was excused from most of his mounts.