HOLLYWOOD PARK : This Colt Has a Dimension of Greatness

The owners of Blumin Affair bought the 2-year-old colt because of his measurements. Whether the horse measures up to undefeated Brocco in today’s $500,000 Hollywood Futurity is another matter.

Brocco and Blumin Affair have met before, when the heavy favorite in the Futurity won his third consecutive race, the $1-million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile by five lengths last month at Santa Anita. Neither horse had been around two turns before then, with Blumin Affair earning $200,000, his richest payday, for finishing second.

“He was very impressive for just his fourth start,” said Tom Van Berg, whose father, Jack, trains Blumin Affair. “He was as cool as a cucumber. He never turned a hair in the paddock. He just got tired at the eighth pole.”

The Juvenile was run at 1 1/16 miles, the same distance as today’s race.

Leroy Bowman and Art Vogel, who live in Hamburg, Iowa, a farming community of about 1,700, bought Blumin Affair for $20,000 at a yearling auction on the advice of Cecil Seaman, a Lexington, Ky., bloodstock agent who has an unusual way of culling horses. He recommends them to clients based mainly on their size.

According to Bowman, who met him about five years ago, Seaman had done a quantitative study of more than 400 champion horses. When he goes to a sale, Seaman measures various parts of the prospects and compares them. Blumin Affair, Bowman said, ranked in the top 1/2% of all the horses Seaman had ever measured.

Bowman, 37, has been buying horses since the mid-1980s, but before this year his horses had won only one race.

“I’ve taken a lot of ribbing,” Bowman said of Hamburg. “They’ve told me that Cecil’s out to measure my pocketbook, not my horses, but I don’t think what he’s done is any fluke. He’s the best agent in the country. In this age of greater technology, what he’s doing makes some sense. Would astronauts go to the moon and then use only slide rules to make their calculations?”

It was today’s race, more than the Juvenile, that brought the son of Dynaformer and Medical Affair to California. After the colt was shipped from Remington Park in Oklahoma City to Van Berg’s barn at Hollywood Park in September, a sharp victory in an allowance race at Santa Anita prompted the Hall of Fame trainer to run him against Brocco and Dehere, the Eastern standout, in the Breeders’ Cup.

Vogel, 72, has known Van Berg for years, from the trainer’s days at AKsarben in Omaha, Neb., and races other horses with him in California.

“He ran big,” Van Berg said of the Juvenile. “He took a step backward at the start. But all in all, it was a very good race for him, and I couldn’t have been happier with the way he ran.”

The first time Blumin Affair ran, at AKsarben on July 15, he won a sprint by 7 1/2 lengths. Nine days later, he missed winning a $25,000 stake by a half-length. The plan to send Blumin Affair to Remington for more seasoning was disrupted when an outbreak of an equine virus hit AKsarben. A quarantine detained the horse in Nebraska for three weeks, and consequently his next race was for Van Berg at Santa Anita on Oct. 21, when he won by 2 1/2 lengths.

Neither Bowman nor Vogel has ever raced a horse as good as Blumin Affair. Bowman had a stakes winner running in Omaha this summer, but he has a chipped knee. “I named him Nunavut,” Bowman said, “because I had put a lot of money into horses, and seen none of it.”

Bowman farms corn and soybeans, about 1,900 acres, and Vogel sells fertilizer, after 50 years in the popcorn business.

“Before I sold out,” Vogel said, “we were number two or three in the country, behind Orville Redenbacher. Orville was a competitor, but I got to know him and we are friends. He always thought he had the best hybrids, but I thought I did. Now I do just about anything I want. We’ve got a place in Palm Springs and spend a few months there every year.”

Vogel names his horses after popcorn, and one of them, Popcorn Girl, will run at Hollywood Park on Monday’s closing-day card.

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Winning for the first time at 1 1/16 miles, heavily favored Sardula ran a stakes-record time of 1:42 1/5 Saturday to score a one-length victory in the $252,900 Hollywood Starlet. After an inquiry into the stretch run, stewards ruled that Sardula’s brushing of Tricky Code near the eighth pole didn’t affect the outcome.

Sardula broke Fabulous Notion’s record of 1:42 2/5, which was set in 1982, the second year the stake was run.

Horse Racing Notes

Brocco is the 2-5 morning-line favorite for today’s Hollywood Futurity, followed by Blumin Affair at 5-1 and Flying Sensation at 6-1. . . . Skimble, third behind Flawlessly and Toussaud in the Matriarch, is the high weight at 117 pounds for Monday’s $100,000 Dahlia Handicap. . . . Assistant trainer Jeff Lukas was still listed in critical condition Saturday. He suffered severe head injuries Wednesday while trying to halt a runaway horse near the barn of his father, Wayne Lukas, at Santa Anita.