Whittingham Has Numerous Success Stories : Del Mar: Trainer’s $1.7-million colt is impressive in grass debut. Stevens and Rash win both halves of Oceanside Stakes.

Trainer Rodney Rash and jockey Gary Stevens may have swept the Oceanside Stakes with Powis Castle and Saltgrass as Del Mar opened its 55th season Wednesday, but the 3-year-old to beat on grass at the seaside course will be Numerous, who made a convincing turf debut while stragglers in the record-crowd of 34,697 were still looking for parking spaces.

In the third race of the humid, 75-degree afternoon, Numerous stalked Foreign Merger early and then held off Golden Slewpy through the stretch, despite a repeated tendency of trying to pull himself up once he takes the lead. That’s a bad habit that another good horse of trainer Charlie Whittingham’s had. His name was Ferdinand and he won the Kentucky Derby in 1986.

Numerous, a $1.7-million yearling purchase by Howard Keck, whose former wife raced Ferdinand, won the Derby Trial, but Whittingham had another colt, Strodes Creek, ready to run in the Derby and saved Numerous for the Preakness. Besides drawing the outside post in a 10-horse field at Pimlico, Numerous carried Pat Valenzuela in the direction of the grandstand as they left the gate and finished a well-beaten fifth.

Whittingham was going to run Numerous in a $100,000 race in New York the same day as the Belmont Stakes, but that plan failed when the Mr. Prospector colt suffered a stone bruise. Back at Hollywood Park, Whittingham began training Numerous on the grass, because of sensitive feet and because his dam, Number, knew how to run on turf.

“This should be a tough grass horse,” Whittingham said of Numerous. “If you put horses on the grass, they last longer. This is a nice horse, very athletic looking. The Del Mar Derby (a $300,000 grass race on Sept. 5) is very much a possibility, but he’s also nominated for the Pacific Classic (a $1-million dirt race on Aug. 13), and we’ll consider that too.”

Numerous won by 1 3/4 lengths over Golden Slewpy, who hadn’t raced since last summer. When Numerous started pulling himself up, Chris McCarron went to a left-handed whip to get him going again.

Whittingham would have entered Numerous in the Oceanside, but because of the colt’s victory at Churchill Downs, he couldn’t satisfy the conditions of the stake. Numerous ran his mile race in 1:35 4/5, much faster than either Powis Castle or Saltgrass in their divisions.

Powis Castle won for the first time in 7 1/2 months with a powerful stretch run that left him three-quarters of a length ahead of City Nights at the wire. Like Numerous, Powis Castle was making his first start on grass for Rash, a former Whittingham assistant, and the opening half of the Oceanside was his first outing since he was eighth in the Kentucky Derby and ninth in the Preakness.

“(Switching Powis Castle to grass) is the Charlie coming out in me,” Rash said. “Whenever Charlie got a good horse, he couldn’t wait to run all of them on grass.”

Stevens, who has won at least a share of the divided Oceanside four out of the last five years, was aboard Powis Castle for the first time. The son of Rare Brick had been winless in four starts since Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records, bought him the day after he won a minor stake at Turfway Park in December. The race that caught Rash’s attention this winter at Santa Anita was Powis Castle’s strong second in the San Rafael Stakes behind Tabasco Cat, who went on to win the Preakness and Belmont Stakes.

“We finally got a jockey who rode him right,” said Roger Campbell, who manages Gordy’s stable. “You’ve got to sit off the pace with this horse, and wait and wait, and then he’ll give you that one big explosion.”

After Powis Castle’s victory, a nervous Rash kept looking at the tote board, expecting the stewards’ “Inquiry” sign to be flashed

“This horse is still green and dumb,” Rash said after the result was declared official. “I guess they’re not doing any inquiries today. I thought that Numerous might have come in a little in his race too. I guess that what they figured was all right for Charlie was all right for me.”

The day wasn’t devoid of disqualifications, however, and the horse moved down a notch by the stewards was Ocean Crest, after he had finished third while interfering with Rapan in the stretch of the other division of the Oceanside. Rapan, who finished fourth before being moved up to third, was trying to rally between Saltgrass and Ocean Crest when Ocean Crest and Garrett Gomez came out from the fence, costing Rapan and Alex Solis the chance to get through.

Saltgrass, a son of Woodman and Papochino, was bred and is raced by Bob Hibbert, the Houston oilman who won the Oceanside with Sky Gipsy II in 1960, and raced Roving Boy, the country’s champion 2-year-old colt, in 1982.

Unlike Powis Castle, Saltgrass was accustomed to grass before Wednesday, but had finished second in all five of his turf starts. He lost three races by the combined margins of one length and a nose earlier this year.

Powis Castle and Saltgrass were both favored, paying respective win prices of $6 and $5.40. Saltgrass beat the filly Twice the Vice by one length. Stevens wound up with three winners for the day.

Horse Racing Notes

Instead of waiting for the $300,000 Ramona Handicap on Aug. 6, Rodney Rash has entered the European champion User Friendly in a 1 1/16-mile grass race on Friday. “This is her first start in the U.S.,” Rash said, “and I wanted an easier spot rather than running against horses like Flawlessly and Hollywood Wildcat right away.”. . . Friday’s race drew four other entrants--Viviana, Miss Turkana, Empress Club and Lyphard’s Delta. . . . Chris Antley, whose five-day suspension from Hollywood Park was supposed to start at Del Mar Thursday, has obtained a court stay and will continue riding. . . . Chris McCarron suffered a bruised and sprained right ankle when his mount in the sixth race, Fly’n Ogygian, flipped in the gate. McCarron’s X-rays were negative, but it wasn’t known whether he will ride today. Fly’n Ogygian was scratched. . . . The 10-horse field of 2-year-old colts, many of them making their first start, was being loaded for the five-furlong race when it was discovered that the gate was positioned a sixteenth-of-a-mile too far up the backstretch. Those horses had to be unloaded and the field stood on the track for several more minutes while the tractor moved the gate into the correct spot. Fly’n Ogygian flipped after the second loading attempt. . . . The largest attendance in Del Mar history broke the record of 29,856 that was set on opening day in 1987.