Finley Is Happily Seeing Red After California Sires Stakes

Several years ago, on the recommendation of someone in Kentucky, Jack Finley bought a broodmare sight unseen at a Keeneland auction for $50,000.

“They shipped her back here and I didn’t like her at all,” Finley remembered Monday. “I’ve picked out all the horses I’ve bought ever since.”

One of those hand-picked horses is Red, who cost Finley $26,000 at a Del Mar yearling sale. The chestnut colt, only a 2-year-old, has already earned $188,285, including $56,325 Monday at Santa Anita for his 5 1/2-length victory in the $93,875 California Sires Stakes for colts and geldings.

The next logical race for Red would be the $100,000 California Cup Juvenile at Santa Anita on Nov. 2, but Finley and his trainer, Henry Moreno, aren’t green-lighting this assignment without some thought. The Cal Cup race is over 1 1/16 miles, farther than Red has run before, and they’re not so sure Red will be as effective around two turns as he is sprinting.

Red dusted five other Cal Cup nominees Monday, running seven furlongs in 1:22 2/5, two-fifths of a second faster than Cavonnier’s victory in the stake last year. Renteria, second most of the way to Red, finished second, beating the maiden Inexcessivelygood by half a length. Favored Red’s win price was $3.60.

Rene Douglas, who had ridden Red in six of his seven previous races, is suspended and Corey Nakatani took over.

“He still acts like he’s a little green,” Nakatani said. “Down the backside, he switched [lead feet], and he wasn’t supposed to switch yet. But I just let him run his race and stayed out of his way.”

If Finley and Moreno came to Nakatani for a vote, he would recommend running in the Cal Cup.

“He acts like he’ll go on,” Nakatani said.

Red was so named because Moreno has a habit of calling for chestnuts by saying, “Get me the red horse” to stable hands. He has won three of seven starts, mainly by running from off the pace, and now Moreno thinks that might have been a mistake. Red broke Monday from the inside post, which has produced only 5% of the winners at the meet, forcing Moreno and Nakatani into a change of tactics.

“I was worried about the No. 1 spot,” Moreno said. “I was afraid they might shut him off leaving the gate. So we let him run a little bit more during the first part. He’s a nice colt. I haven’t had that many 2-year-olds over the years to make a comparison, but this one is sound and he tries hard.”

Red’s career began in Arizona, where Finley lives, in a three-furlong futurity trial at Turf Paradise. After finishing second that day, he broke his maiden in his first start for Moreno at Hollywood Park in June.

In July, he finished second to Swiss Yodeler in the Hollywood Juvenile, and then ran three times at Del Mar--winning the Graduation for California-breds and finishing fourth in open company in both the Best Pal Stakes and the Del Mar Futurity.

Inexcessivelylucky, Inexcessivelygood’s stablemate, was 2-5 to win the filly division of the California Sires Stakes, but she was caught in an early duel with Filaree and the maiden Unaflame, at 13-1, came running in the last sixteenth of a mile to score a one-length victory.

Unaflame, who ran as an entry with Morning Patrol, the fourth-place finisher, for trainer Leigh Ann Howard, had raced only twice, finishing second at Fairplex Park and running third, beaten by 6 1/2 lengths 10 days ago at Santa Anita, in the race in which Inexcessivelylucky broke her maiden.

Howard, the general manager of Valley Creek Farm, was not present for her third training win of the year. Her assistant, Carlos Cabello, said she was in Idaho looking for broodmares to breed to Far Out East, Unaflame’s sire, and the farm’s other stallions, Swing Till Dawn and Falstaff. Tom Capehart, the breeder and owner of Unaflame and a partner in Valley Creek Farm, said Mel Stute will saddle the filly for her start in the $100,000 Cal Cup Juvenile Fillies on Nov. 2.

Unaflame’s victory was worth $55,230. She ran seven furlongs in 1:23 4/5, paying $28 for $2. Inexcessivelylucky finished 2 1/2 lengths ahead of Fair Mims, and Filaree, after forcing the pace under Goncalino Almeida, was last in the seven-horse field.

Horse Racing Notes

Trainers had been predicting that Santa Anita’s new turf course would be producing record times, and Konba, winning the seventh race, ran 1 1/4 miles in 1:57 3/5, a fifth of a second slower than the course and world record that Double Discount set in 1977. Konba, who ran four times this year for a $50,000 claiming price at Woodbine, made his first start for trainer Vladimir Cerin. . . . Lovely And Fleet’s win in the sixth gave trainer David Hofmans and jockey Michael Hunter their fifth consecutive win at the meet. They combined Saturday for the victory with Beau Jingles in the Henry P. Russell Handicap.

Pat Valenzuela took the day off and Eddie Delahoussaye went home after riding early on the card. “There’s a bug going around,” steward Ingrid Fermin said. “And when that happens, it usually hits just about everybody in the jockeys’ room. Pat sounded really bad when he called in sick.”

Trainer Bob Baffert indicated he will probably run Criollito in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint and Zippersup in the Juvenile. Both horses are scheduled for workouts today. Criollito needs to be supplemented at a cost of $200,000. . . . At Belmont Park, Sixieme Sens, trained by Bobby Frankel and ridden by Jerry Bailey, won the $100,000 Athenia Handicap for her first stakes victory in the U.S.