THOROUGHBRED RACING / BILL CHRISTINE : San Felipe Might Be Close, but It Won’t Match ’72

Perhaps the best way to learn about a match race is to ask a man who has won one. Trainer Willard Proctor is such a man.

On June 17, 1972, Proctor saddled Convenience, a catch-me-if-you-can filly who won a $250,000 match race against Typecast at Hollywood Park.

Proctor, 79, can look across from his barn, No. 79, to barn 89, where a handler is having fun with Afternoon Deelites in the morning sun, whistling softly into his ear, holding a hand over one of the colt’s eyes. For a while at Santa Anita this week, it looked as though Timber Country and the undefeated Afternoon Deelites would be the only starters in Sunday’s $200,000 San Felipe Stakes, leaving the track with an unplanned, unwanted match race.

But at least two longshot challengers may surface by post time. Third place is worth $30,000.

“They’re both damn good colts,” Proctor said. “You can’t say nothing but good things about (Afternoon Deelites). And you can’t say nothing bad about (Timber Country), either, and he should improve with distance. If it had been a match race, (Afternoon Deelites) has the style that usually works better. He’s won everything he’s tried, and he hasn’t even been asked to run yet.”

Afternoon Deelites’ free-running style is not unlike Convenience’s. Timber Country is a fall-back type who waits for the speed ahead of him to dissolve before he unwinds with one solid run.

“The only difference between them is their running style,” Proctor said.

Convenience and Typecast were opposites, too, and Turkish Trousers was a third horse in this supercharged mix of distaffers 23 years ago. Stakes-record times were frequently required for any of these horses to beat the two others.

When the rivalry shifted from Santa Anita to Hollywood Park in mid-1972, Fletcher Jones, the owner of Typecast, proposed a three-horse showdown. After Typecast, giving away five pounds, had lost by half a length to Convenience in the Vanity Handicap, Jones said that he would put up $25,000 for a match race if the two other owners would each match the stake.

Turkish Trousers, whose legs had taken a pounding, was on the verge of being retired. Leonard Lavin, who had bought Convenience as a yearling for $32,000, was not sold on a match race and figured that the more he increased the pot, the less the chance that Typecast’s camp would accept.

But when the stakes reached $100,000 per man, with Hollywood Park throwing in another $50,000, Jones agreed and Lavin couldn’t back out. At equal weights, 120 pounds, the race was set for 1 1/8 miles, with Jerry Lambert riding Convenience and Bill Shoemaker aboard Typecast.

The crowd of 53,515 made Typecast, a 6-year-old, the 2-5 favorite, with Convenience, two years younger, going off at even money. As the horses neared the post, Bernice Lavin was surprised that her husband hadn’t gone to bet.

“Putting up the $100,000 ought to be enough,” Leonard Lavin said.

Proctor, who had worked the gate as an assistant starter before his training career started in 1938, reminded Lambert that the latch is sprung quickly in a match race.

“My filly still broke flat-footed,” Proctor said.

But Convenience overtook Typecast before the horses reached the first turn, and Lambert opened up two lengths on his rival on the far turn. Shoemaker’s mare made a good run through the stretch, but Convenience hit the wire a head in front.

Forty years ago, Shoemaker rode Swaps against Nashua and Eddie Arcaro in their famous match race for $100,000 at Washington Park in Chicago.

“I was down at Del Mar with horses then,” Proctor said. “I was betting anybody that wanted any that Nashua was going to win. I put up $100 to any $75.”

Almost four months before, Swaps had beaten favored Nashua in the Kentucky Derby, and continued winning when he went back to California, while Nashua won both the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes.

“Arcaro let Swaps get away from him in the Derby,” Proctor said. “I could have ridden Nashua and won the Derby. But they were determined that Swaps wasn’t going to do the same thing in Chicago. Forgetting that Swaps might not have been right for the race, Nashua had been trained so that he was going to out-break him. The next day, they all lined up at Del Mar, paying me off.”

Afternoon Deelites and Timber Country are Kentucky Derby-bound. Their respective trainers, Richard Mandella and Wayne Lukas, would prefer gleaning more insight from the San Felipe than what a two-horse exercise might provide. That’s why Mandella nominated another of owner Burt Bacharach’s colts, Zg Media, and may actually run him.

Other possible starters for the San Felipe are Score Quick, Lake George and Huge Gator. The San Felipe will be the fifth race on the card.