HORSE RACING / BILL CHRISTINE : Breeders’ Cup Will Get a Boost From Soviet Problem in Sprint

Soviet Problem, a 4-year-old filly who has run poorly only once in a 17-race career, will be shipped from Maryland to Kentucky on Sunday, and her owners, John Harris and Don Valpredo, are expected to make a preliminary payment Monday that will keep her eligible for the $1-million Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Churchill Downs on Nov. 5.

Because Soviet Problem wasn’t nominated for a fee of $500 three years ago, Harris and Valpredo must supplement her into the race for $120,000. The first payment of $40,000 is due Monday, with the balance to be paid Nov. 2, when entries are drawn for the seven races worth $10 million.

First place in the Sprint is worth $520,000. “It won’t be a good financial decision to run,” Valpredo said. “We’ll be putting up more than 20% of what we’re running for. But John and I have always been strong about making contributions to racing, and since the Breeders’ Cup is designed to bring the best horses together, we feel that our filly ought to be there.”

The addition of Soviet Problem comes at the best possible time for the beleaguered Breeders’ Cup program. This year’s races will be run without several prominent horses, including Holy Bull, the favorite for horse-of-the-year honors.

It would cost Jimmy Croll, Holy Bull’s owner-trainer, $360,000 to run for the $1.56-million winner’s purse in the $3-million Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Soviet Problem, extending her record to four consecutive victories against male competition, raced outside California for the first time last Saturday and won the $200,000 Laurel Dash, a six-furlong grass race, in Maryland. Soviet Problem has 14 victories and two seconds in 17 tries. At six furlongs on dirt, which are the conditions for the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, Soviet Problem has eight victories and one second in nine starts.

“We think she can compete effectively in the Sprint,” Valpredo said. “She’s now won seven in a row, and there’s not a North American sprinter who’s done that. And she’s beat the boys on grass and dirt.”

Chris McCarron, who is four for four aboard Soviet Problem, rode the filly at Laurel.

“She must have lost a length and a half at the start,” McCarron said. “She gets tense in the gate, like a lot of the real fast sprinters do, and she kicked six or seven times while she was waiting. When the door opened, her right hind leg was off the ground.”

For the third time in her career, Soviet Problem came from off the pace to win. She beat another California filly, Cool Air, by 1 1/4 lengths.

In May at Golden Gate Fields, trainer Bob Baffert tried to beat Soviet Problem with three of his top sprinters in the $150,000 Oakland Handicap. Soviet Problem fought them off to win by one length.

“She’s the real thing,” said Baffert, who won the Breeders’ Cup Sprint with Thirty Slews in 1992.

McCarron pointed out that fillies have done well in the Sprint. Very Subtle won the race in 1987; Safely Kept won the race in 1990, the year after she lost the stake by a neck; and a pair of necks prevented Meafara from winning it in 1992 and 1993.

As a 3-year-old in 1993, Soviet Problem won her first five starts by a combined 34 lengths before her only off-the-board finish, a seventh in the Railbird Stakes at Hollywood Park in May.

She suffered a tendon injury in that race, and trainer Greg Gilchrist wasn’t able to bring her back to the races until last February.

Soviet Problem was bred by Valpredo and Harris, who stands her sire, Moscow Ballet, at the family’s 18,000-acre cattle and horse ranch in Coalinga.

Soviet Problem’s dam, Nopro Blama is by Dimaggio, whom Don Valpredo’s father, John, named after his favorite ballplayer. Dimaggio, winner of the Hollywood Juvenile in 1974, was 22 when he died in February.

Soviet Problem could become the first California-bred to win a Breeders’ Cup race. Since the series began in 1984, 31 Cal-bred starters have been unsuccessful while horses from such unfashionable breeding states as Oklahoma and Pennsylvania have won Breeders’ Cup races.

The closest a California horse has come to winning was when Fran’s Valentine finished first in the first Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, only to be disqualified to 10th by the stewards for interference in the stretch.

The first of McCarron’s five Breeders’ Cup victories came in the 1985 Sprint with Precisionist.

“I think supplementing Soviet Problem is worth their while,” McCarron said. “She’s so quick that she feels like a rubber band that’s been pulled back as far as you can pull it.”

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Jerry McKeon, president of the New York Racing Assn. tracks since 1982, resigned unexpectedly Wednesday.

McKeon, who has been with the NYRA since 1971, appeared in announcing his resignation said: “New York racing is lost and is trying to find its way in the presence of many gambling alternatives that have developed in recent years.” The NYRA operates Aqueduct, Belmont Park and Saratoga.

With the exception of the five-week summer hiatus at Saratoga, the association has been struggling in recent years with its winter racing operation at Aqueduct.

In late August, Jerry Lawrence, executive vice president of the NYRA, resigned, citing philosophical differences with the association’s board of directors.

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Mike Smith, who has tied his 1991 record by winning 62 stakes races this year, will be back aboard Devil His Due, the likely favorite for the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Because of Smith’s commitment to Holy Bull, Jerry Bailey rode Devil His Due in his last two races, second-place finishes in the Woodward and the Jockey Club Gold Cup.

Smith, who leads the country in purses with more than $12 million, has been the rider for Devil His Due’s three victories this year.