HOLLYWOOD PARK : Paseana Could Make Smart Move to Top

Bloodstock agents representing trainer Ron McAnally are shopping for another filly in Argentina.

“You’ve got to go back to the source,” McAnally said from his Santa Anita barn Friday.

That source has been a gold mine for McAnally, who has won four Eclipse Awards with two mares bought at reasonable prices in Argentina.

In 1989-90, South American import Bayakoa won two Breeders’ Cup Distaff races, two division titles and was retired a year later with earnings of $2.8 million.

Paseana, whose career also started in Argentina, has won one Breeders’ Cup race and two division titles besides out-earning Bayakoa, and by the end of the current Hollywood Park season, McAnally’s 8-year-old may become the richest distaffer to ever run.

Going into Sunday’s $100,000 Hawthorne Handicap, Paseana’s purses are at the $3-million mark, $193,433 short of the $3.2 million that the brilliant Canadian filly, Dance Smartly, earned when she ran in 1990-92. Paseana would overtake Dance Smartly if she wins the Hawthorne and the $300,000 Vanity Handicap, which will be run July 23, the next-to-last day of the meet.

Dance Smartly, who won 12 times and was never worse than third in 17 starts, earned her money in globs for owner-breeder Ernie Samuel, $2.8 million of it coming in 1991 when she went undefeated in eight races and was voted Canada’s horse of the year.

A million dollars of that total resulted from a bonus that the Bank of Montreal offered to any horse that could sweep the Canadian Triple Crown. In those three races, the Queen’s Plate, the Prince of Wales and the Breeders’ Stakes, Dance Smartly devastated an ordinary crop of colts, winning by a combined margin of 18 lengths.

Without the advantage of a seven-figure bonus, Paseana’s best earnings year has been 1992, when she racked up $1.5 million with seven victories in nine starts. The only mistake that year was made by McAnally and her owners, Sidney and Jenny Craig, who watched her finish fifth after a couple of colts rudely brushed her aside in the last quarter-mile of the $1-million Pacific Classic at Del Mar.

The Craigs, who paid about $320,000 for Paseana after she won five of eight starts in Argentina in 1991, probably wouldn’t still be running their mare if it weren’t for the pursuit of Dance Smartly’s record.

The owners are fortunate that Paseana is in the hands of McAnally. Only six Eclipse Awards have been won by horses older than 6, and half were claimed by the McAnally-trained John Henry, who in 1984 was a horse of the year as a 9-year-old.

The last two years, with the inevitable concessions to age becoming a factor, Paseana has been forced to grind out the dollars. She ran only three times in 1994, winning the Santa Margarita Handicap at Santa Anita for the second time, but her season ended with a victory in a race at Del Mar in August, and she finished the year recuperating from surgery for an entrapped epiglottis.

Early this year, McAnally brought her back with visits to some of the old Santa Anita haunts, the Santa Maria and Santa Margarita handicaps, and she would have won both of those races again if it hadn’t been for Queens Court Queen, a faster stablemate. Then McAnally shipped Paseana to Oaklawn Park in April, to try to win the Apple Blossom Handicap for the third time.

The problem in Arkansas was that the Apple Blossom wasn’t run over the same racing strip that Paseana had won on before.

“Oaklawn did the right thing, but it didn’t help our horse,” McAnally said. “They can get a lot of rain there, and they added a lot of sand to the surface. Except for Cat’s Cradle [who won the Fantasy], none of the California horses did very well there this year. The filly that beat us [Heavenly Prize] had the advantage of having run over the track about three weeks before.”

Paseana was third, five lengths behind Heavenly Prize.

Sunday’s 1 1/16-mile Hawthorne is a race that Bayakoa won in 1989-90. Paseana is part of a seven-horse field that also includes Top Rung, Borodislew, Angi Go, Tocopilla (another Argentine-bred) and Pirate’s Revenge and Jacodra’s Devil, who both race for owners Marty and Pam Wygod. Pirate’s Revenge was a nine-length winner of the Miss Hollywood Park Stakes on April 29.

For the Hawthorne, Paseana isn’t carrying 125-127 pounds, as she once did, but, at 122 pounds, she’s still easily the high weight, five pounds more than Pirate’s Revenge, Angi Go and Top Rung.

One of the reasons that McAnally ran Paseana in the weight-for-age Pacific Classic in 1992 was to give her a respite from the high weights she had been carrying.

“I don’t know,” McAnally said, referring to Sunday’s weights. “She’s been beaten three straight times, and she’s still carrying 122 pounds, the same as the last race. Then there’s a filly in there that won by nine, and all she picked up was one pound.”

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Horse Racing Notes

Pat Valenzuela was named to ride eight horses on Friday’s card, including several live mounts, but he took the night off and also won’t ride the rest of the holiday weekend. “There’s talk that the stewards took Pat off, but that’s not true,” said Valenzuela’s agent, Jim Pegram. “Pat took himself off. He called me and said he couldn’t ride because of some family problems.” . . . Hollywood Park will accept betting on telecasts of Sunday’s Peter Pan Stakes and Monday’s Metropolitan Handicap, both from Belmont Park. . . . Expected to run in the $500,000 Metropolitan, at a mile on the dirt, are Silver Goblin, Romarin and Devil His Due. Romarin, winner of the Early Times Turf Classic at Churchill Downs on Kentucky Derby day, was coughing after that race and missed the Early Times Dixie at Pimlico last Saturday. Corey Nakatani has ridden him in most of his races, including the victory at Churchill, but Mike Smith has picked up the assignment for the Metropolitan. Most of Romarin’s races have been on grass, but he has won three times on the main track and was second in the slop to College Town in the Arcadia Handicap at Santa Anita.