THOROUGHBRED RACING / BILL CHRISTINE : Differing Rules Cause Confusion Among Tracks

It’s a good thing City Lights didn’t finish first in the Santa Anita Handicap two weeks ago. If he had, the winner’s purse in the $1-million race might have gone to the second-place horse for the second consecutive year.

A year ago, The Wicked North was disqualified because of interference after winning the Big ‘Cap, and a state hearing officer upheld the stewards’ decision. The $550,000 victory went to Stuka, who ran second.

This year, City Lights, a 78-1 shot, was ridden in the Big ‘Cap by Julio Garcia, a jockey who was under suspension in Puerto Rico. Under racing’s reciprocity rule, stewards recognize suspensions from other jurisdictions, but Garcia beat the system and could have been an embarrassment at Santa Anita had City Lights run well. The 4-year-old colt did the stewards a favor by finishing as the betting public thought he would, ninth in a 10-horse field.

“If that horse had won, a protest almost surely would have been allowed,” Santa Anita stewards Pete Pedersen said Thursday.

Gonzalo Combas Sancho, administrator of the Horse Racing Sport and Industry in Puerto Rico, was disappointed that the Santa Anita stewards had allowed Garcia to ride.

“Someone was negligent,” Combas wrote in a letter to the Assn. of Racing Commissioners International.

When Garcia returned to Puerto Rico, racing authorities at El Comandante track in San Juan handed him a 60-day suspension for having ridden in the Big ‘Cap. But that was before they heard his story.

Garcia said he hadn’t tried to put one over on the Santa Anita stewards, that he had told them before the race he had been suspended. Combas said that when El Comandante stewards learned that, they reduced the suspension to a $500 fine.

In a high-tech world, the Santa Anita stewards were caught with no tech at all on March 11. Jack Van Berg, trainer of City Nights, had named Garcia on his horse at entry time two days earlier, telling the stewards that Garcia should be allowed to ride because of California’s designated-race rule. That rule allows suspended jockeys to ride in major races designated by the stewards.

“The Big ‘Cap was a designated race, all right,” Pedersen said. “But the rule only applies to jockeys under suspension in California. A suspended jockey in Puerto Rico can’t come in and be covered by that rule.”

Garcia’s suspension was for 10 racing days at El Comandante, covering the calendar period of March 1-17. The track was open only 10 days during that period. In California, stewards’ rulings list only the local racing days that a suspension must be served. The racing days are not necessarily consecutive, because dark days--at Santa Anita, usually Mondays and Tuesdays--are excluded. On those dark days, a Santa Anita jockey is allowed to ride at another track.

“That’s an unusual, if not a unique, approach,” said Tony Chamblin, president of the Assn. of Racing Commissioners International, which received Combas’ angry letter. Chamblin was not aware of the way California suspensions are interpreted.

The morning of the Santa Anita Handicap, Santa Anita’s stewards called El Comandante several times to confirm Julio Garcia’s suspension, but the track was closed and there was no answer. Santa Anita’s stewards, applying the California rule, reasoned that since the Big ‘Cap fell on a dark day at El Comandante, that wasn’t one of Garcia’s suspension days and he should be allowed to ride.

Combas, a former turf reporter, doesn’t agree with the way the Santa Anita stewards do business.

“I don’t believe in the designated-race rule,” he said. “What’s the punishment if a jockey is allowed to ride in a rich race even though he’s suspended? As for Garcia, a suspension is a suspension is a suspension. He was suspended here, and he shouldn’t have been allowed to ride there.”

Like Puerto Rico, many states list calendar days for suspensions, rather than racing days.

“We’ve been doing it according to racing days for a long time,” Pedersen said. “The thinking is, a five-day suspension is enough. Riders used to go to Caliente (in Tijuana) to ride while they were suspended up here. If a rider’s prohibited from going someplace else on a local dark day, then that would be an added penalty that he doesn’t deserve.”

All Garcia did was listen to his trainer, who thought the designated-race rule applied. All he did after that was tell the stewards about his suspension and then ride in the Big ‘Cap because they said he could. But it’s costing him $500, and it could have been worse.

From medication to jockeys’ suspensions, racing can’t seem to get it right, because the rules aren’t the same from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Trainer Wayne Lukas is facing a 60-day suspension in New York for a positive drug test. A horse tested positive for the same drug in California, and that trainer got a $2,000 fine. In Florida, with the same drug involved, stewards dismissed charges against several trainers.

Where, you say, is the commissioner of racing with his conformity committee? Well, yes, racing does have a commissioner now--Brian McGrath of the Thoroughbred Racing Assns. of North America. But El Comandante is not a member. Next case.