It’s Hard to Let Opportunity Just Skip Away

One thing about the $480,000 decision that trainer Sonny Hine is debating: He doesn’t have to go far to find the horse’s owner. Sonny and Carolyn Hine have been married for 34 years.

They are the caretakers of Skip Away, the gray 3-year-old who thrust himself into the horse-of-the-year mix by beating Cigar last Saturday in the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park. To win the horse-of-the-year title, Skip Away would have to beat Cigar again, in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Woodbine on Oct. 26, and because he wasn’t nominated by his breeders three years ago, it will cost the Hines a supplementary penalty of $480,000--12% of the purse--to make him eligible for the $4-million race.

Before the Belmont race, Sonny Hine was saying no with conviction to the Breeders’ Cup. After Skip Away held off Cigar by a head in a stretch battle, Hine opened a slight crack in the door. By Monday, the crack opened a little wider, and now Hine says that he and his wife will decide this weekend.

“It’s a tough decision,” said trainer Richard Mandella, who will try to beat Cigar, and any other horse that shows up for the Classic, with Dare And Go and probably Atticus, who is also a candidate for the Breeders’ Cup Mile on grass.

Mandella has been in the supplementary-entry box himself, saddling Best Pal after his owners, John and Betty Mabee, forked over $360,000 to run in the $3-million Classic at Churchill Downs in 1984. Best Pal ran fifth and earned $60,000.

“It’s different with Skip Away,” Mandella said. “The Hines are also the owners, so they’d be putting up their own money, not somebody else’s. They’ve got to weigh that with the chance to win the [horse-of-the-year] title if he runs and wins.”

Some Eclipse Awards voters--they come from the ranks of the turf writers, the Daily Racing Form and racetracks’ racing secretaries’ offices--apparently think so highly of Cigar that they would still vote him horse of the year if he was beaten at Woodbine.

There is a dichotomy to both of these horses’ records. Skip Away won the Blue Grass at Keeneland in April, then made his way through the Triple Crown races, finishing second in both the Preakness and the Belmont after a 12th-place run in the Kentucky Derby.

Meanwhile, Cigar was winning at Gulfstream Park, at Dubai, Suffolk Downs and Arlington International, running his streak to 16 races and matching the accomplishments of Citation more than 45 years ago.

Then when Skip Away won the Ohio Derby, the Haskell and the Woodbine Million--with a third-place blip in the Travers--Cigar’s streak was ended by Dare And Go at Del Mar, and he lost for the second time in three starts last Saturday.

From this observation post, Cigar needs to win at Woodbine. Horse-of-the-year voters are notorious for best remembering what horses have done for them lately.

Skip Away’s late achievements have made more acceptable Sonny Hine’s early-season complaints about bad post positions. Hine had attributed the colt’s Triple Crown problems to a No. 16 draw at the Derby, a No. 11 for the Preakness and a No. 13 in the Belmont. At one point, over a four-race stretch, Skip Away had drawn inside of only five of 51 opponents.

Now, with Cigar’s marquee power dimmed, the Classic needs a Cigar-Skip Away rematch at Woodbine badly, and if officials from the Breeders’ Cup aren’t camped out at Keeneland, stroking Sonny and Carolyn Hine every waking minute, they should be.

Sonny Hine entertained the notion of accepting part of the $480,000 from some of his other clients, which would make them one-shot partners in the race at Woodbine, but now has discarded that option and says that if Skip Away runs, it will be with nothing but Hine money behind him. The Hines aren’t exactly destitute, of course. They paid $22,500 for Skip Away as an unraced 2-year-old and he has earned $2.7 million.

Of the 40 horses that have been supplemented in the Breeders’ Cup, seven have won, but a supplementary hasn’t scored in the Classic since the first year, 1984, when the owners of Wild Again, a 31-1 shot, put up $360,000 and won $1.35 million.

It’s a risky investment even if the horse runs but if a horse is supplemented and then injured before race day, the owner forfeits the down payment. Sam Rubin learned that the hard way in 1984, losing $130,000 when John Henry was scratched a week before the race. To make Skip Away eligible this year, the Hines must make an initial, nonrefundable payment of $160,000 by Tuesday.

John and Betty Mabee actually supplemented their Best Pal into three Breeders’ Cups. Their total outlay was $840,000, and his only paycheck was $10,000 for a sixth-place finish in the Juvenile in 1990.

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Different, winner of last Sunday’s Spinster at Keeneland, is expected to be supplemented for $200,000 to run in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff.

Southern Playgirl, a candidate for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, was a five-length winner Thursday in the $271,500 Alcibiades at Keeneland.

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Two Ninety Jones won Thursday’s feature at Santa Anita, in which Dusty Girl, a 6-year-old mare, broke her right shoulder and was destroyed after clipping the heels of another horse and falling in the last sixteenth of a mile.

Jockey Corey Black was not injured.