THOROUGHBRED RACING : Old, Gray Mare Gets a Hard Sell for Eclipse Award

The danger for owners who campaign for their horses at Eclipse Awards voting time is the potential backlash. Hype can turn off voters, just as it might influence them.

Leonard Lavin has been living dangerously for years. Even though he’s chairman of a company that makes hair spray, Lavin doesn’t use the stuff. His wife, Bernice, has reminded him of this from time to time, most recently last month when Lavin’s fast gray 6-year-old, One Dreamer, scored the biggest upset of the day in the Breeders’ Cup at Churchill Downs.

There might have been a fall breeze in the winner’s circle, but it was the mare--not the hair--that was foremost in Lavin’s mind. Since an 8-year-old Leonard Lavin and his father saw Reigh Count win the Kentucky Derby in 1928, he has been close to horses. Few have been closer than One Dreamer, a daughter of Relaunch, another gray who gave Lavin a victory in the Del Mar Derby in 1979.

So Lavin doesn’t care if his zeal hurts at the Eclipse ballot box. He has never won a title, and he can’t let this election go by without going to bat for his horse.

“Sky Beauty’s a great mare,” Lavin said the other day, calling from his car phone from in suburban Chicago. “But I think I’ve got the best mare in the business.”

The voters must decide whether Sky Beauty’s pre-Churchill Downs record means more than the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, in which One Dreamer outran a formidable field at 47-1. Lavin’s candidate for the best filly or older mare title finished more than 12 lengths ahead of Sky Beauty, who ran last in the nine-horse field.

Before the Breeders’ Cup, Sky Beauty was favored to win the Eclipse Award. She was undefeated for the year, having rolled up five victories from May to September on her home New York tracks. But her campaign turned into a reflection of last year when she was also dominant early before finishing fifth in the Distaff at Santa Anita and blowing the Eclipse for best 3-year-old filly.

Sky Beauty’s record is a strange one. In 18 starts, she has lost only four--three on tracks outside New York and the other on a foul after she had finished first at Saratoga.

“I wonder whether the horses Sky Beauty was beating in New York this year had the class that the horses had in the Distaff,” Lavin said. “My horse didn’t need her (home) track with her to win. She won on an off track early in the year at Churchill. She won on both firm turf and soft turf at Arlington. Then she won on a fast dirt track in the Breeders’ Cup. Hollywood Wildcat (winner of the 1993 Distaff) was lapped on One Dreamer early and couldn’t keep up. And Heavenly Prize, who ran second (by a neck) at Churchill, is probably the best 3-year-old filly in the country, but she wasn’t going to pass us if we went around again.”

Hollywood Wildcat, struggling with the cuppy Churchill Downs surface, ran sixth in the Distaff. One Dreamer finished the year with four victories, a second and a third in eight starts. Her best losing race was a fourth-place finish on grass in the Beverly D at Arlington International in late August. She lost by only 1 1/2 lengths and the 1-2 finishers were Hatoof, the probable female grass champion after a second-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Turf; and Flawlessly, champion distaffer on turf in 1992-93.

“A Chicago handicapper wrote us off in the Distaff and said, ‘Must be dreaming,’ ” Lavin said. “But we thought we had a real shot, because the mare had never run a bad race.”

Relaunch, bought by Lavin at a yearling auction for $73,000, has sired about one-third of Lavin’s more than 40 stakes winners. Not an automatic horse to vote for by any means, One Dreamer was an easy horse to root for because of her struggling beginnings.

“She ran only once at 3 and really didn’t get started until she was a 4-year-old,” Lavin said. “She had that cyst on a lung and almost died before we got it taken care of.”

Lavin and his trainer, Tom Proctor, wanted to run One Dreamer once more this year, to give the voters something else to think about and finally settled on the one-mile Top Flight Handicap at Aqueduct last Friday. New York is where many of the Eclipse voters go racing.

“She got some heat in one of her knees,” Lavin said. “So we decided to retire her.”

Horse Racing Notes

Best Pal worked a half-mile Thursday in :49 4/5 and trainer Richard Mandella said that the 6-year-old gelding will run Sunday in the $100,000 Native Diver Handicap. . . . Nine distaffers are entered for Saturday’s $100,000 Bayakoa Handicap, including Miss Dominique, who ran third at 77-1 in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff. Others entered in the 1 1/16-mile race are Magical Maiden, Borodislew, Dancing Mirage, Glass Ceiling, Thirst for Peace, Fondly Remembered, Enchanted Spot and Klassy Kim. The high weights are Miss Dominique and Magical Maiden, at 120 pounds. . . . Randy Romero, trying to make a comeback after a short-lived retirement earlier this year, won Thursday with Sabreen, a filly who dropped from stakes company to $50,000 claimers after losing by 34 1/2 lengths in two previous starts.