SANTA ANITA HANDICAP : Best Pal Is Not the Best Bet : Horse racing: Irish-bred Urgent Request beats him to win Big ‘Cap as owner’s wager, jockey’s trip pay off.

The $550,000 first-place purse wasn’t the only pot Urgent Request’s owner was shooting for in Saturday’s $1-million Santa Anita Handicap.

A minute or so before post time, Stewart Aitken made a $90,000 win bet and added $30,000 to show on his 5-year-old Irish-bred. The odds on Urgent Request plunged from 9-1 to 5-2.

After Urgent Request held off Best Pal to win the Big ‘Cap by a head, Aitken reached into his pocket and produced the tickets. “I fancied the horse,” the Scottish-born owner said matter of factly.

So did trainer Rodney Rash, who was saddling Urgent Request for the first time, and Gary Stevens, who had come Hong Kong to ride.

“We were very confident,” said Stevens, who won his third Big ‘Cap in the last six years. “We tried to downplay his chances all week, but I wouldn’t have spent almost 30 hours flying back and forth to Hong Kong if I didn’t like him a lot.”

Urgent Request’s final odds were 3-1, and he paid $8.40, $5.80 and $2.40. Besides the $550,000 purse, Aitken turned a $294,000 profit on his bets.

“I had heard that Mr. Aitken was quite a punter,” Stevens said. “Apparently, it’s nothing for him to bet a million on his horse. He wasn’t coming here for his health.”

Stevens, who left Santa Anita last month after signing a riding contract in Hong Kong that runs through mid-June, had ridden Urgent Request once, to a fifth-place finish in the Rothmans International at Woodbine in Toronto in October. The gray horse’s only start since then was a second-place finish in a race in Hong Kong on Dec. 11. So, besides running on dirt for the first time, he was also coming into the Big ‘Cap off a 90-day layoff.

John Henry won the race in 1982 after resting 91 days, and Greinton, the 1986 Big ‘Cap winner, hadn’t raced in 120 days. Rash was an assistant to Charlie Whittingham when he was revving up Greinton that year.

“It was Mr. Aitken’s decision to send the horse over and run him here,” Rash said Saturday. “I couldn’t have done it without the input of Mr. Aitken and Reg Akehurst, his trainer in England, who was more than helpful in telling me what to do with the horse.”

Despite 2 1/2 inches of rain Friday and early Saturday, the track came up fast for the Big ‘Cap, but the threatening weather held the crowd to 26,015, smallest in the 58-year history of the race. Whittingham, a nine-time winner of the race, scratched his longshot, Numerous, because of the outside post position.

On the turn for home, trainer Richard Mandella had two shots at winning. Best Pal, last going down the backstretch and more than 10 lengths behind, was in high gear on the outside; and Dare And Go was in third place, behind Del Mar Dennis and Urgent Request. Dare And Go flattened out, losing by just over a length, but Best Pal, with Chris McCarron aboard, simply ran out of ground.

“I could hear Best Pal coming,” Stevens said. “I heard Chris’ whip and I heard him yelling. Then, with about 50 yards left, I could see him out of the corner of my eye. But my horse is like the Eveready rabbit. He just keeps going. He doesn’t stop. I just knew that if he didn’t fall down, he wasn’t going to get beat from the eighth pole home.”

John Henry is the only two-time winner of the Big ‘Cap, and Best Pal was trying to match him, having won the Santa Anita race in 1992. Best Pal and his entrymate, Dramatic Gold, went off as the 3-2 favorite. The 7-year-old gelding was beaten by a horse running 1 1/4 miles in 1:59 1/5, the third-fastest time in the last 13 runnings of the stake.

“(Best Pal) just couldn’t catch the horse on the lead,” McCarron said. “I thought I had a real good chance from the eighth pole to the wire. At the sixteenths pole, I thought I was going to catch him. But Urgent Request didn’t waver at all. He just kept going. I had worked that horse once for Rodney, and he worked awesome that morning. He loved the dirt.”

Del Mar Dennis, who was ahead at the quarter pole, tired and finished fourth, a head behind Dare And Go. Urgent Request carried 116 pounds, six fewer than the top-weighted Best Pal. Stevens, who has been riding heavier in Hong Kong, said that he had to take off five pounds to ride Saturday.

Urgent Request, running distances of 1 1/2 miles or farther much of his career, went into the Big ‘Cap with four victories in 14 starts and earnings of $285,903. The Rothmans was his first start in North America.

“He dropped me three times in the post parade at Woodbine,” Stevens said. “He was just testing me, and he kept wheeling around. By the time we got to the gate, we were both worn out. My instructions were to get as big a lead as we could, and going down the backside, we were 15 lengths in front. So he had no chance for a breather, but still we only got beat by two lengths.”

When Urgent Request arrived at Santa Anita, Rash’s job was to get him to relax.

“Frank Dalton has done a tremendous job working with him in the mornings,” Rash said. “He got him to settle down.”

Urgent Request and Mandella’s two horses might meet again in the Hollywood Gold Cup on July 2. The portly Aitken will settle for a reprise of Saturday, but he’d like some California sunshine as well.

“When we decided to come here with the horse, I packed a new bikini and my suntan lotion,” Aitken said. “I haven’t needed either one of them.”