SANTA ANITA : Bien Bien Starts 1994 Without Rival Kotashaan

Trainer Paco Gonzalez doesn’t have to beat the drums for Bien Bien. He has Richard Mandella to do it for him.

“Just think what Bien Bien would have done if it hadn’t been for my horse,” Mandella said. “It took everything Kotashaan had to beat Bien Bien in those races. Take Kotashaan out of those races and Bien Bien’s almost got the record that my horse had.”

Mandella-trained Kotashaan, en route to the Eclipse Award’s male turf title and a certain horse-of-the-year championship that will be announced in New Orleans next Friday night, won three of his six races in 1993 by beating Bien Bien in hard-fought battles.

Their rivalry began inauspiciously at Santa Anita last winter, when Kotashaan finished second and Bien Bien was fourth in the San Marcos Handicap. After that, Kotashaan and Bien Bien ran 1-2 every time they met.

In March, Kotashaan won the San Luis Rey Stakes by 1 1/4 lengths. In April, Kotashaan needed every inch of the San Juan Capistrano Handicap’s approximately 1 3/4-mile distance to beat Bien Bien by a nose, and Mandella’s horse was a half-length better in November at Santa Anita in the Breeders’ Cup Turf Stakes. Two of those races were at equal weights, and the purse difference between first and second place in all three was more than $875,000.

“Bien Bien was a terrible horse to have to hook,” said Kent Desormeaux, who rode Kotashaan to those victories. “He would just refuse to let you by. In the Breeders’ Cup, we got up to (Chris) McCarron’s elbow, and there was Bien Bien again, holding us off. Those two horse eyeballed each other all year long.”

On paper, it didn’t look as though Bien Bien had much of a year: only two victories in seven starts. The rub was that the 5-year-old son of Manila had the misfortune to be peaking at a time when he was surrounded by grass standouts. When Kotashaan wasn’t beating him, Star Of Cozzene was.

“I can’t think of another year when we’ve had so much depth in the turf division,” Mandella said.

This is how tough that division was:

--Lure, winner of the Breeders’ Cup Mile for the second consecutive year, didn’t even win an Eclipse Award.

--Star Of Cozzene, who beat Kotashaan and Lure twice each, finished a distant third in the Eclipse voting.

--Fraise, the winner of the Breeders’ Cup Turf in 1992, was a 14-1 longshot when he finished fourth in the 1993 running.

--Flawlessly, the female turf champion for the last two years with seven victories in 10 tries, ran ninth in the Breeders’ Cup Mile.

Kotashaan will become the first grass horse to win the national title since John Henry in 1984.

Kotashaan has been sold, retired and sent to Japan to begin a breeding career. Of the four turf stars that remain, Bien Bien will be the first out of the gate in 1994, having been entered for Saturday’s $125,000 San Marcos Handicap at Santa Anita.

Gonzalez is keeping his eye on the weather, however, because Bien Bien doesn’t like soft going. The San Marcos was run on a soggy turf last year, when Star Of Cozzene beat Kotashaan by a length and Bien Bien finished fourth. Bien Bien’s worst race of the year, in the Man o’ War Stakes that Star Of Cozzene won in September, was run in a bog at Belmont Park.

For Bien Bien’s first start in almost three months, he has drawn the outside post in a seven-horse field that also includes Square Cut, Robber Ramble, Navire, Explosive Red, Fanatic Boy and Myrakalu.

Bien Bien is the high weight at 122 pounds. Explosive Red, next in the weights at 116 pounds, shipped to California from Canada and won the Hollywood Derby in November, then finished third, 6 1/2 lengths behind Fraise, in the Hollywood Turf Cup. Square Cut and Robber Ramble will run as an entry.

Chris McCarron, who has ridden Bien Bien in his last 14 races and in all six of his victories, is sitting out a five-day stewards’ suspension, so Laffit Pincay will take over for the San Marcos.

Gonzalez and Bien Bien’s owners, Trudy McCaffery and John Toffan, who bought him at a yearling auction for $100,000, ran the horse on dirt early in his career, without much success. With Bien Bien’s breeding--Manila was the male turf champion in 1986--a future on grass was inevitable.

Lure, another slow starter on dirt, also has grass bloodlines, but trainer Shug McGaughey said that had little to do with the switch of surfaces. An honest man, McGaughey said that he moved him to the turf just because he couldn’t think of anything else to do.

Horse Racing Notes

Elaborating on a published report that several investigators were closely watching a horse scheduled to run in last November’s Breeders’ Cup, Santa Anita security director Dick Smith said, “Two sources, one from the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau’s task force, the other locally, had told us that somebody might try to get to the horse with drugs. The owners of the horse had no knowledge of anything going on. Then, a few days before entry time, the owners decided not to enter the horse, for a perfectly legitimate reason, something not related to our investigation. When the horse wasn’t running, the danger faded away. But before that, we still thought that our sources had been onto something. We were all relieved when the horse didn’t run.” Smith declined to identify the horse.