This Stogie Is as Good as Gold

“W hat this country needs is a good five-cent cigar.”

--Thomas Marshall, 1910

The country’s on its own. But what the 56th running of the Hollywood Park Gold Cup needs, it got--a good $5-million Cigar.

That would be Allen Paulson’s 5-year-old bay horse by that name. He might not be what the country needs, but he’s what horse racing could use. Especially the Gold Cup.

The Hollywood Gold Cup goes deep in the lore of the Los Angeles sports scene.

It was Citation’s last race. Naturally, he won it.

Seabiscuit won it. Several Kentucky Derby winners have won it--Swaps, Affirmed, Ferdinand, to name a few. Several Kentucky Derby winners have also lost it--Ferdinand, again, Sunday Silence, Alysheba, Determine.

Native Diver won it three years in a row, the only horse to win it more than once. He also lost it once.

Gallant Man, who should have won the Kentucky Derby, did win here. Round Table won it as a 3-year-old. Only one other horse, Quack, did that. Native Diver was 8 when he last won it.

John Henry couldn’t win it. Lots of great horses couldn’t--Palestinian, Hill Prince, Honeymoon, Belmont winner Avatar.

Before there were Rams, Dodgers, Lakers, Clippers and Raiders, the Gold Cup was a major fixture on the L.A. sports calendar. Before you could make bets in supermarkets, it used to attract 85,000 people. But what the ’95 Gold Cup, which runs here Sunday, needs is a good smoke, a big star on the track.

Cigar makes it. He is the best race horse in the country. He has won eight consecutive races. Not even Secretariat did that.

He’ll be challenged by one of the few horses on the track with the credentials to do it, Robert Meyerhoff’s Concern. The presence of both prompted Hollywood Park to bump the purse from $750,000 to $1 million.

At issue could be more than money. At issue could be horse-of-the-year honors, a breeding plum for the winner and a place in the history books. The Gold Cup has had eight horses of the year in its past--Ferdinand, Affirmed, Ack Ack, Round Table, Swaps, Challedon, Criminal Type and Citation.

Cigar is, as they say around a racetrack, a horse “that likes to win forwardly.” English translation: front-runner. Come get me. While not exactly a clock-breaker, he runs as fast as he has to.

Concern is less hurried. More apt to take the scenic route. Save his run for what the riders call “the lane.” The homestretch. The final 100 yards.

There are others in Gold Cup contention. The ever-dependable gelding Best Pal, now 7, is still capable of teaching the youngsters a trick or two--like the short way to the finish line. Best Pal was second in the 1991 Kentucky Derby and is, at the moment, the only horse in the Gold Cup field with a chance to join Native Diver as a multiple winner. He won the race in 1993.

Also on the track will be the English upstart, Urgent Request, who, in his debut in American racing, only won the Santa Anita Handicap.

But it is Cigar that gets above-the-title billing in Sunday’s drama. Around the racetrack, they call a horse this good “a monster.”

How good is Cigar? Well, a win streak of eight is Man O’ War stuff. And the margins were eight, seven, two, 5 1/2, 7 1/2, 2 1/2, 2 1/4 and four lengths, respectively. Cigar smoked ‘em. Save the film. No photo finishes needed.

These were not overnight races we’re talking here, these were for the most part Grade I stakes. In other words, title fights. The opposition meant nothing to Cigar. Neither did the geography. Horses for courses? Cigar won at Aqueduct (New York), Oaklawn Park (Arkansas), Gulfstream Park (Florida), Pimlico (Maryland), Suffolk Downs (Massachusetts). He piled up more frequent-flyer miles than a Secretary of State. If it’s Tuesday, it must be Miami.

Cigar doesn’t care where the racetrack is, only what it is. He’s a son of the soil. Can’t stand grass.

This perplexed the industry because Cigar’s sire, Palace Music, had raced in England and France exclusively on grass. His son can’t stand the stuff.

When Cigar was beaten (by 14 1/2 lengths) in the 1993 Hollywood Derby, Paulson shipped him to New York to trainer Bill Mott. Mott tried him on the lawn twice, then dropped him into one of those “non-winners of two races” allowances on the main track at Belmont. Cigar took to the dirt like a steam shovel. He won the mile race by eight lengths in 1:35. Under a hand ride.

His next race was the New York Racing Assn. stake at a mile, and he won that by only seven lengths. He was fast. He was also as game as they came. He was carried five horses wide into the stretch in one race and still won by five. He was carried six-wide in the next race--and won by 7 1/2. At Oaklawn Park, he was smashed in the face by a rival jockey’s whip in the stretch. Like a fighter who gets off the floor, he came on to win.

He was not beating the riffraff of the track. When he flew to Pimlico for the Special, he beat horses like Devil His Due and Concern, who won the Breeders’ Cup Classic last year.

He was not named after a panatela but after an aviation checkpoint in the Gulf of Mexico, where Paulson, a crack record holder, used to get his bearing.

The best bet is, Cigar will light up the race. The words owner Paulson and trainer Mott don’t want to hear at the finish line: “Close--but no Cigar.”