Prince Of Thieves Adds to Confusion for Lukas With Santa Catalina Win

Trainer Wayne Lukas, who has nominated 17 horses for the Triple Crown races, won with two of them Sunday and saw an inexperienced third colt run a respectable third in his first start.

At Santa Anita, Prince Of Thieves, rebounding from a sixth-place finish in his previous race, won the $104,250 Santa Catalina Stakes, beating Smithfield by three lengths. An hour earlier, Lukas saddled Dr. Caton, who couldn’t hold a lead and finished third while being asked to run 1 1/16 miles in his first race.

Lukas also has several of his 3-year-olds in training at Gulfstream Park, where one of them, Victory Speech, was a winner in a 1 1/16-mile allowance race.

Lukas has won the Kentucky Derby twice, with Winning Colors in 1988 and Thunder Gulch last year, and is on an unprecedented five-race Triple Crown streak, having won the Preakness and the Belmont in 1994 with Tabasco Cat and sweeping the three races last year when Thunder Gulch won the Derby and Belmont and Timber Country captured the Preakness.

“I’m starting to get tangled up with horses,” Lukas said about his latest 3-year-old crop. “We’re going to have to sit down and plan what we’re going to do, because we don’t want to be running them against one another.”

Honour And Glory, who’s also trained by Lukas, is a probable next Saturday in the $100,000 San Vicente Stakes at Santa Anita.

Lukas blamed himself for Prince Of Thieves’ poor showing in a one-mile allowance on Jan. 12, but the son of Hansel--out of Fall Aspen, the same mare that produced Timber Country--rebounded in his stakes debut. The field also included Matty G, the Hollywood Futurity winner who finished third after leading with an eighth of a mile to go.

Prince Of Thieves, paying $14, ran 1 1/16 miles in 1:42 4/5 on a track that was labeled good.

“The horse was really tired the last time,” jockey Gary Stevens said. “In the paddock, Wayne told me that I wasn’t running a short horse this time. That gave me a lot of confidence, and that’s the way I rode him. This time he was full of run the entire trip. He’s got a lot of class, and I’m pretty excited about him.”

Unbridled’s Song, who won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Belmont Park in October as a Lukas trio--Hennessy, Editor’s Note and Honour And Glory--ran second, third and fourth, finished second Sunday in his 3-year-old debut, the $75,000 Hutcheson at Gulfstream. Appealing Skier, who beat him by a half-length at seven furlongs, ran 12th in the Breeders’ Cup, but that was on a muddy track.

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Lit De Justice got a new rider--Eddie Delahoussaye, who replaced the suspended Corey Nakatani--but the same old blindfold enabled the troublesome 6-year-old gray to be loaded into the gate without incident, and he scored a 1 1/2-length win over Siphon in the $215,100 Palos Verdes Handicap, another stake on the Strub day card at Santa Anita.

Lit De Justice covered the six furlongs in 1:08 4/5.

Horse Racing Notes

The handle of $18.1 million was a record for a Strub day, the second-biggest at a winter meet and the fourth-highest in Santa Anita history. . . . Trainer Wally Dollase has won six races at the meet, five of them stakes. . . . Chris McCarron became the second jockey to go over the $190-million mark in career purses. Laffit Pincay reached that level earlier at the meet. . . . In Character, running for the first time since his 10th-place finish in the Kentucky Derby in May, was pulled up by McCarron on the stretch turn. He was lame in his left foreleg and was vanned off the track. . . . Tucker Slender broke a foot in an accident at home and his son, Jay Slender, will be the official starter until his father recovers. . . . Cigar, who will receive horse-of-the-year honors next Friday, was weighted at 128 pounds for his 1996 debut, Saturday’s $300,000 Donn Handicap at Gulfstream.