THOROUGHBRED RACING / BILL CHRISTINE : Delahoussaye Has Good Luck With Sardula

Trainer Brian Mayberry and jockey Eddie Delahoussaye were leaning on the railing of a backstretch porch that overlooks the track at Hollywood Park. They were having some fun.

“Yes, if there are only three horses in (Sunday’s $200,000 Hollywood Oaks), it will be a jockeys’ race,” Mayberry said. “But I’m not worried, because I’ve got the smartest jockey in America.”

Mayberry looked at Delahoussaye, and Delahoussaye looked at Mayberry, and Delahoussaye laughed. He will be riding the multiple stakes winner Sardula for Mayberry in the Oaks, which may indeed have only three starters.

“Well, at least I’ll have the smartest jockey in the race,” Mayberry said.

Delahoussaye laughed again.

“That’s if (Chris) McCarron’s out of town,” Mayberry said.

Delahoussaye continued laughing. He always rides Sardula. He has ridden the 3-year-old filly eight consecutive times--to six victories and two second-place finishes--and in many of the races Sardula did all the work.

Eleven months ago, at Del Mar, she broke in with a 10-length victory. A month after that, she won the Del Mar Debutante by 7 1/2 lengths. In April, after a layoff of almost four months, she won the Santa Paula Stakes at Santa Anita by 8 1/2 lengths. Then last month at Hollywood Park, she won the Princess by 5 1/2.

“I’ve ridden a lot of good fillies, but this one might be the best,” Delahoussaye said. “Going short or long, she impresses you. She can do it all. In Kentucky, I think I only hit her once. I didn’t have to. When she got to the front, her momentum just kept carrying her.”

Last year at Santa Anita, Phone Chatter, the eventual division champion, handed Sardula her only losses, by half a length in the Oak Leaf and by a head in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies. Phone Chatter has resumed training after suffering an ankle injury in the Breeders’ Cup, but in her absence, Sardula had all she could handle in the Kentucky Oaks at Churchill Downs on May 6, beating the undefeated Lakeway by a half-length. Lakeway will be one of her two or three rivals in the Hollywood Oaks.

On behalf of his clients, Jerry and Ann Moss, Mayberry bought Sardula at a Keeneland yearling auction for $110,000. Before the sale, Mayberry and his wife, Jeanne, looked at this daughter of Storm Cat and Honor An Offer, and labeled her what they call a “gotta-have.”

In his sales catalogue, Mayberry had penciled in the figures $150,000 to $250,000 as Sardula’s probable price.

“I had a feeling that Storm Cat was going to break out as a sire,” Mayberry said. “And of course he has. (His son, Tabasco Cat, won this year’s Preakness and Belmont Stakes.) This filly came from Crestwood Farm, which I know well. Pope McLean does a fine job of raising horses there. I thought Sardula would have brought at least $200,000. We would have gone to more than $200,000 to get her, because you rarely see a horse that looks this good.”

Asked why Sardula went for only $110,000, Mayberry said, “She’s a great example of why you should go to all the sales. Anomalies can happen. Maybe another guy (who would have bid) was at the bar, having a drink. Maybe another guy was on the phone, talking to his girlfriend. I don’t think it was any secret that this filly was in the sale. She was a stickout.”

Sardula beat Phone Chatter by 7 1/2 lengths in the Del Mar Debutante, and after that result flip-flopped in the Oak Leaf. Mayberry believes that his filly lost the Breeders’ Cup because of a change in the track surface.

“It was one way one day, and another way the next,” he said. “They dug up the inside, and it was very deep down on the rail, where we were. My filly ran seven lengths slower than she did the previous time.”

In mid-December, Sardula rebounded with a victory in the Hollywood Starlet, then Mayberry gave her an extended rest, keeping her at the barn but subjecting her to only a light training program.

“It had nothing to do with soundness, because she wasn’t unsound,” Mayberry said. “You can start early running 2-year-olds, but if you’ve got one that you think is really going to be good, there’s a time frame when they do most of their growing and developing. You’ve got to use that window of opportunity to give them some time off. But we kept Sardula’s muscle tone up the entire time she was away from the races.”

Delahoussaye will ride her Sunday in the 1 1/8-mile Oaks, then go into a San Gabriel clinic Monday for a 45-minute operation on what has been diagnosed as a deviated septum.

“I’ll be an out-patient, and I should only miss about a week,” said Delahoussaye, who has been ill most of the spring with a virus that knocked him off mounts in the Preakness with Numerous and the Belmont Stakes with Strodes Creek. Despite his frequent absences, Delahoussaye ranks seventh nationally with $4.4 million in purses.

Sardula has given him more than $300,000 of that total, while pushing her overall earnings over the $800,000 mark.

“She’s good at anything from 5 1/2 furlongs to a mile and an eighth,” Mayberry said. “I think she could be the best sprinter in the country if we wanted to crank her up.”

Horse Racing Notes

Brian Mayberry, who has won the last four runnings of the Landaluce Stakes with Rhapsodic, Zealous Connection, Fluttery Danseur and Garden Gal, takes two shots in Saturday’s $100,000 race with Chordette and How So Oiseau. The favorite will be Serena’s Song, who will be running an eighth of a mile farther than she did in winning by 10 lengths at five furlongs on June 25. Serena’s Song is trained by Wayne Lukas, who trained Landaluce, the winner of this stake in a record 1:08 when it was called the Hollywood Lassie in 1982. Landaluce, undefeated in five starts, was voted champion juvenile filly after she died from a virus at the end of the year. She was buried in the Hollywood Park infield. Others running Saturday are Cat’s Cradle, a contender who drew the inside post; and Marfa Smeralda, Metro Link, Dymaxion, Texinadress, Embroidered and Dancin At The Wire. Serena’s Song, to be ridden by Gary Stevens, drew the No. 9 post.

Brocco, idle since running fourth in the Kentucky Derby, won’t run in the Swaps Stakes on July 23. The Santa Anita Derby winner, scratched out of the Belmont Stakes because of a bruised foot, probably will return to action at Del Mar. . . . Corey Nakatani rode three winners Thursday, two at 17-1 and 19-1.