SANTA ANITA : Longshot Soul Of The Matter Hits Right Note in San Felipe Stakes

Burt Bacharach said that it was the most bizarre of days. Finishing an exhausting concert tour, the Academy Award-winning composer flew from Atlanta to Los Angeles on Sunday morning.

“There I was on the plane, reading a copy of Vanity Fair with Jack Nicholson on the cover,” Bacharach said. “A few hours later, here I am at Santa Anita, and Jack’s handing me a trophy. And in between, I’m in the middle of another earthquake.”

The ground shook at Santa Anita at 1:20 p.m., while the horses for the third race were in the tunnel that leads to the track, and at 2:04 Bacharach’s colt, Soul Of The Matter, registered a shock of his own. While Brocco and Valiant Nature, the two favorites, were battling through the stretch in the $208,500 San Felipe Stakes, Soul Of The Matter and Kent Desormeaux completed a successful run from last place to win the 1 1/16-mile race by 2 1/4 lengths. The Kentucky Derby had gained a new contender.

When Bacharach arrived at Santa Anita, the first thing he and trainer Richard Mandella needed to discuss was whether Soul Of The Matter should run on a track that was gooey from Saturday’s 1.15 inches of rain. “I write the songs and Dick (Mandella) trains the horses,” Bacharach said. “Whatever he decided to do was all right with me.”

Another trainer, Charlie Whittingham, had inspected the track and decided to keep his San Felipe entrant, Numerous, in the barn. Whittingham had also scratched Numerous from a race on Saturday, when the track was sloppy, and on Sunday he was saying: “This is a $1.7-million horse, and the track is dangerous. The jockeys said the track was spotty. This is the kind of track where a horse can hurt a tendon or break something. We’ll wait for the Santa Anita Derby (on April 9).”

Although Soul Of The Matter’s development has been hampered by a cracked hoof on his left foreleg, Mandella decided that the colt was going to run. “If the track had been sealed and it had been hard with some grease on top, we would have scratched,” the trainer said. “We had just put a new patch on the crack a few days ago, because the other one wore out. It might have been better for him to run on a track that was softer than usual.”

Soul Of The Matter, winning his first stake, won for the third time in five starts and paid $14.60 as the third betting choice in a field of five. His time was a slow 1:44 3/5.

Brocco, winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and second to Valiant Nature in the Hollywood Futurity, suffered his second loss. He beat Valiant Nature out of third by a head, and it was 16 lengths farther back to Gracious Ghost. Soul Of The Matter carried 116 pounds, three less than Brocco and Valiant Nature.

Neither Brocco nor Valiant Nature had run in three months and their trainers were reluctant to run because of the mud. To keep them in the race, Santa Anita officials had considered switching the San Felipe to a mile on grass. Brocco’s trainer, Randy Winick, and Ron McAnally, Valiant Nature’s trainer, plan to be back for the Santa Anita Derby.

Soul Of The Matter had run twice at the meet before Sunday, winning an allowance race and running third in a minor grass stake.

“When my horse started moving, I felt good,” Mandella said of Soul Of The Matter’s stretch run. “Those other horses had three months off and had a right to get tired in this kind of going.”

Breaking from the outside post, Valiant Nature was angled to the rail and the lead by Laffit Pincay. Pollock’s Luck separated Valiant Nature and Brocco down the backstretch, with Brocco and Gary Stevens moving closer to the leader on the inside as the race reached the far turn.

Soul Of The Matter was last after a half-mile, 10 lengths off the pace. At the three-quarter pole, he was still eight lengths back.

“He sat in behind them with dirt in his face, but nothing ever bothers him,” Desormeaux said.

In mid-stretch, the battle was on up front, with Brocco sticking a head in front and Valiant Nature refusing to give up. Soul Of The Matter blew by both of them with a sixteenth of a mile left.

Desormeaux has ridden Bacharach’s colt for all three victories. “He went straight as a needle all the way,” the jockey said, “but when he got to within a half-length of the first two, he tried to lean in. I don’t know why. We couldn’t have had a better setup. I just hope we get the same setup in the next one and that we have the same amount of horse under us.”

Mandella said his colt probably will run next in the Santa Anita Derby, the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland or the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct. The Kentucky Derby is May 7.

Bred by Bacharach, Soul Of The Matter is a son of Private Terms and Soul Light, whose dam, Icantell, produced Heartlight No. One, the composer’s champion 3-year-old filly in 1983. Soul Of The Matter was bred in West Virginia, a state that’s never had a Kentucky Derby winner.

Horse Racing Notes

Strodes Creek is expected to join stablemate Numerous for the Santa Anita Derby. . . . In the Daily Racing Form’s weekly survey of Nevada future books, Soul Of The Matter was listed as between 25-1 to 60-1 for the Kentucky Derby, with the average odds 40-1. . . . In another 3-year-old race Sunday, Blumin Affair, second to Brocco in the Breeders’ Cup and fourth in the Hollywood Juvenile, ran fourth as his Jack Van Berg-trained stablemate, Cut N. Cruise, scored a 20-1 upset. . . . At Golden Gate Fields, Chris Antley rode Southern Truce to victory in the $100,000 Miss America Handicap. . . . The only ticket with all the winners in the Pick Six was worth $394,948.40.