HOLLYWOOD PARK : Winning Phone Call for Kowal

A deal that former hockey player Joe Kowal made on his car phone less than 24 hours before the race turned into immediate dividends when 35-1 shot Frenchpark stormed home a three-length winner Sunday in the $500,000 Hollywood Turf Cup.

Kowal, who played two seasons for the Buffalo Sabres in the 1970s, not scoring a goal but once getting prominent billing in a video of “The NHL’s Greatest Fights,” bought Frenchpark for $200,000 from bloodstock agent Hubert Guy at 7 p.m. Saturday, while driving home to Newport Beach. Guy had bought the 4-year-old British-bred colt in France in early October, planning to sell him to former pitcher John D’Acquisto, but when that deal and a few others fell through, he spent several weeks trying to find another buyer.

“It was a hectic time,” Guy said. “I am in the business of buying and selling horses, not racing them, and I was going out of my mind with what to do with this horse.”

According to a pre-race agreement, Kowal and Guy will split the $275,000 winner’s share of the purse, which was more than three times what Frenchpark earned while winning two of 12 previous races. Frenchpark raced in Europe, where he was passed around to three trainers, before Terry Knight saddled him for his U.S. debut, a fourth-place finish in the Burke Handicap at Santa Anita last month.

If the ownership exchange sounds convoluted, consider how Corey Black got the chance to ride Frenchpark. Black, who rides frequently for Knight, would have been Frenchpark’s jockey for Burke, but he was committed to Sir Mark Sykes, who ran third in the race. Eddie Delahoussaye rode Frenchpark, but he switched to Jackdidi for the Turf Cup and settled for a ninth-place finish. Black might have been in Hong Kong this weekend, but he became available for Frenchpark because he had been taken off his regular mount, Megan’s Interco, who finished far back in an $800,000 race there Saturday.

Savinio and Square Cut, who also ran in the Turf Cup, finished 1-2 in the Burke, but that was at 1 1/4 miles, a quarter of a mile shorter than Sunday’s race, and Frenchpark bled badly at Santa Anita and was able to run with a bleeder’s medication for his second U.S. start. He defeated Dare and Go, the 9-5 favorite, who was 1 1/4 lengths ahead of Regency. Savinio was a neck back, in fourth place, and River Flyer, the Hollywood Derby winner, finished sixth after leading with an eighth of a mile to go. River Flyer and Square Cut, who was seventh, paid the penalty for battling one another for the lead until the top of the stretch.

Frenchpark, who was timed in 2:25 3/5, missing Itsallgreektome’s 1990 stakes record by four-fifths of a second, paid $72.60, the biggest price since the race was first run in 1981.

In the jockeys’ room before the race, there was indecision about which colors Black would wear for Frenchpark. Black posed in the winner’s circle in the borrowed red-and-black silks of R.D. Hubbard, Hollywood Park’s board chairman.

Last Monday, Black missed the chance to work Frenchpark. The mount had fallen into his lap through a domino effect and he was on his way to Las Vegas for the Jockeys’ Guild convention.

“About all I knew about this horse was that Terry (Knight) thought he had improved leaps and bounds in the last month,” Black said. “I was told to ride him conservatively, and maybe we’d get a piece of it.”

Frenchpark was ninth in the 11-horse field after three-quarters of a mile, but only about six lengths from the lead.

“I had him hidden until the quarter pole,” Black said. “Then I got outside at the three-sixteenths pole and went around Savinio. Then I said to myself, ‘Oh, I got a little chance here.’ He found the next gear and went on with it. At the eighth pole, when we went by Dare and Go, I knew we were going to be very tough. This is a nice way to end a very lackluster summer.”

Gary Stevens, riding Dare and Go, the Hollywood Derby runner-up, would have preferred a faster pace. “It took me a long time to get him to settle,” Stevens said. “But he just couldn’t keep pace with the winner down the stretch.”

Horse Racing Notes

Another of Kowal’s horses, Lisa Mac, won the race after the Turf Cup. . . . Frenchpark gave Terry Knight his first major victory and the biggest since he saddled Magdeleine to win the Matchmaker at Atlantic City in 1988. A trainer for 20 years, Knight was winless at the meet but scored with seven of 14 starters at Hollywood’s summer meet. . . . David Flores had a four-victory day. . . . At Bay Meadows Sunday, Russell Baze won the third race with T.V. Producer, becoming the second jockey to win 400 or more races three consecutive years. Kent Desormeaux had three 400-plus years in a row from 1987-89.