‘Bald Eagle’ Flying in Big ‘Cap

“Hasn’t time passed Charlie Whittingham by?” asked a horseman from Florida.

The Hall of Fame trainer, who will be 83 on April 13, is making no such concession. Although Howard Keck, his biggest and oldest client, is selling all of his horses and leaving the game, Whittingham is still in the fray. He is running Cezind, a horse who used to race for Keck, in today’s $1-million Santa Anita Handicap, and earlier on the card he will run his Kentucky Derby candidate, Smithfield, in the $200,000 San Rafael Stakes.

Whittingham still has about 40 horses in his barn, but volume hasn’t translated into quality lately. The Whittingham barn won only two stakes races all last year and hasn’t won a major race since 1994.

“You need the horses,” Whittingham said. “What did the man say, ‘Find a good horse and you’ll dine with kings’? I’ll give you another one: ‘I’ve never seen a man with a couple of good yearlings who wanted to commit suicide.’ ”

Whittingham and the Santa Anita Handicap have grown up together. When the shiny-headed trainer finished third with Porterhouse and fifth with Impulsivo in 1955, the race was only 18 years old and worth $140,300. Cezind is Whittingham’s 65th starter. One year, he started four horses, accounting for 40% of the field. Seven times, he has started three horses, and in the course of winning the Big ‘Cap nine times, has run 1-2 three times.

“When you’ve got the horses, you’ve got to surround them,” Whittingham said. He even finished first in the Big ‘Cap a 10th time, with Perrault in 1982, but the stewards disqualified the horse for drifting out in the stretch and moved John Henry up to first. John Henry, who had been beaten by a nose, was first across the line in 1981 and is still the only multiple winner of the race.

Fourteen years later, the stewards’ disqualification still gnaws at Whittingham. Making it worse is that Whittingham once had the chance to train an unaccomplished John Henry and turned him down.

“My horse never touched John Henry,” Whittingham said. “Any horse but John Henry and they never take my horse down.”

Whittingham’s first Big’ Cap winner was Corn Husker in 1957. The horse was owned by Liz Whitney Tipton, one of the trainer’s first important clients.

“The first [Big ‘Cap victory] has always meant a lot to me,” Whittingham said. “Corn Husker was a champion jumper, but on the flat he was a slow starter. When he was a 2-year-old, I ran him in claiming races. Then he went away and became a jumper and got real good when he came back.”

Eddie Arcaro would have ridden Corn Husker, but the 4-year-old gelding had been assigned only 104 pounds and the premier jockey couldn’t come close to making that weight. Whittingham gave the mount to Ralph Neves, who rode one pound overweight. At 105 pounds, Corn Husker beat Holandes II, carrying 121 pounds, by half a length. Only one lower-weighted horse--Stagehand, at 100 pounds to Seabiscuit’s 130--has ever won the Big ‘Cap.

Corn Husker paid $9.60 for $2.

“Early in the year, he was 100-1 in the future book at Caliente,” Whittingham said.

Did Whittingham get down at that price?

“The IRS might be listening,” he said.

Smithfield is 3-1 on the morning line in the San Rafael, a much better proposition than Cezind’s 30-1 in the Big ‘Cap. The only thing that Corn Husker and Cezind have in common is that they’re both geldings. Cezind has won only four of 27 races, and he ran 24 times before Whittingham moved him into stakes company. In his last race, the San Pasqual Handicap, Cezind was third behind other Big ‘Cap contenders, Alphabet Soup and Luthier Fever.

Cezind is a son of Ferdinand, who gave the Keck family and Whittingham a Kentucky Derby victory in 1986. Whittingham also won the Derby in 1989 with Sunday Silence, whom he calls the best horse he has ever trained.

A week after the San Pasqual, Cezind was sold at a Barretts auction in Pomona for $200,000 to a five-member partnership headed by Prince Ahmad Salman of Saudi Arabia. Whittingham has continued to train the horse.

Asked by a reporter about Cezind’s chances today, Whittingham said, “I’ve won nine of these, and I hope that the last one wasn’t my last.”

Whittingham’s Big ‘Cap winners have been spread over five decades, and although four of them were favorites, the last two didn’t figure. Ruhlmann was 22-1 against the favored mare Bayakoa in 1990 and Sir Beaufort was 11-1 against Best Pal in 1993.

“Sir Beaufort ran the race of his life and made me look good,” Whittingham said. “Ruhlmann was a very tough horse when he got loose on the lead. I told [jockey Gary Stevens] to ride him like he was robbing a bank, and that’s what he did.”

Horse Racing Notes

Corey Nakatani, who finished third on the favorite, Heza Gone West, in Friday’s fourth race, added to the many complaints that Santa Anita has received regarding the track’s rebuilt turf course. “Horses shouldn’t be running on it,” Nakatani said. “It’s ridiculous, and it’s not fair to the public. Horses are stumbling and can’t handle it. They shouldn’t have grass racing until they get the course straightened out.” . . . Corey Black was fined $500 by the stewards after he whipped his mount, Golden Pretense, beyond the finish line of a race on Wednesday. Golden Pretense finished second. The California Horse Racing Board has adopted a stricter policy regarding the whipping of horses, and earlier at the meet Nakatani was fined $500 and suspended for five days. Tillie’s Joy, the horse Nakatani struck past the finish line, broke down and was destroyed. At a stewards’ hearing, Black testified that he had criticized Nakatani after the Tillie’s Joy race.

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Whittingham’s Big ‘Cap Wins

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Year Horse Jockey Odds 1957 Corn Husker Ralph Neves 7-2 1967 Pretense Bill Shoemaker 17-10 1971 Ack Ack Bill Shoemaker 4-5 1973 Cougar II Laffit Pincay 3-2 1975 Stardust Mel Bill Shoemaker 6-5 1985 Lord At War Bill Shoemaker 5-2 1986 Greinton Laffit Pincay 3-1 1990 Ruhlmann Gary Stevens 22-1 1993 Sir Beaufort Pat Valenzuela 11-1

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