Black Gets Hot, Shuns Hong Kong

For more than a month, Corey Black has had a standing offer from trainer Steve Leung for virtually the same deal that drew Gary Stevens to Hong Kong earlier this year.

Stevens, who returned to California for good the day after Thunder Gulch’s upset victory in the Kentucky Derby on May 6, recommended Black to Leung, who was looking for another American rider.

A jockey on the local circuit since 1985, Black, 26, already has some international experience. He rode for trainer Andre Fabre in France several years ago.

At the moment, however, Black has no travel plans. Things are going too well here.

After a poor Santa Anita meeting, during which he won only 19 races in 89 days, he is tied for third with Kent Desormeaux behind Corey Nakatani and Eddie Delahoussaye in the Hollywood Park standings. He has 20 victories through the first 27 days.

So, what’s different about Black? He has a new look and a new attitude.

While serving a five-day suspension near the end of the Santa Anita meeting, he grew a goatee.

“I was concerned about what people might say when I came back because this is a crazy business and it could offend some of them,” he said.

“But I won a race [on Mac Na Heirin on April 10] and I’ve been doing well since, so I decided to keep it. I like it and my wife [Annemarie] likes it.”

As for his attitude, Black simply says he got mad.

“I just got ticked off because I know in my heart I deserve to be here and that I can ride with anyone and that I’m good enough to ride here. That’s what I believe. Maybe I just needed something to fire me up.”

Hong Kong remains a possibility because of the money offered but if Black goes, it will be on his own terms.

“Maybe it was a matter of ego, but in the past, I kind of looked for the easy way out when things weren’t going well,” he said. “If I were to take the [Hong Kong deal], it would be because the offer was so good I couldn’t afford not to, rather than because things were tough for me here.”

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Cigar, the nation’s best handicap horse, easily won the Pimlico Special last month and should have it even easier today in the $250,000 Massachusetts Handicap at Suffolk Downs in East Boston.

A winner of seven in a row and a loser only once in nine starts on the main track, the 5-year-old Palace Music horse figures to be 1-5 against his eight opponents and should ring up a $500,000 bonus for owner Allen Paulson.

The bonus is why Cigar is running in the Massachusetts Handicap and it would be his for sweeping a series that also includes the Gulfstream Park Handicap, the Oaklawn Handicap and the Pimlico Special.

The 1 1/8-mile race will be simulcast at Hollywood Park between the first and second races. The $200,000 Alabama Derby from Birmingham Race Course will also be simulcast between the second and third. That race is topped by Dazzling Falls and Pyramid Peak.

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Horse Racing Notes

Funeral services will be held Monday at 5 p.m. for Louis (Ed) Lambert, the foreman for trainer Charlie Whittingham for 47 years, at Zook’s Funeral Parlor in Monrovia. Lambert died Wednesday at 92. . . . The probable field for the $150,000 Californian on June 11 includes Best Pal, Blumin Affair, Tinners Way, Tossofthecoin, Stoller and Let’s Be Curious.