Fall Meeting Is Sometimes a Harbinger

At first glance, the timing is all wrong for the Hollywood Park fall meet. This year, the Breeders’ Cup has come and gone, taking most of the national attention in horse racing with it. Most of the Eclipse Awards have been sealed and are ready for delivery. And Hollywood Park’s fall dates include Thanksgiving and end just short of Christmas, the two biggest family holidays on the calendar.

But for some over the years, the Hollywood Park year-end meet has been big.

Itsallgreektome, three for 10 for the year and second in the Breeders’ Cup, won the Hollywood Derby and the Hollywood Turf Cup in a month’s time and was voted national male grass champion in 1990.

Miss Alleged won the Hollywood Turf Cup, indemnifying a win against males in the Breeders’ Cup, and bagged an Eclipse in 1991.

Flawlessly--Miss November--won the Matriarch at Hollywood in 1992 and 1993, clinching division titles.

For others, Hollywood in the fall has been better than New York in June or springtime in the Rockies because it has been a springboard for loftier things.

A year ago, for instance, Alphabet Soup was an underachiever, a horse with five wins in 15 races. Two days before Christmas, his 7 1/2-length victory in the Native Diver Handicap at Hollywood was an understated portent.

And Alex Solis rode 31 winners at Hollywood last fall, more than anyone else, and has gone steady with the finish line ever since.

So as Hollywood Park’s 36-day season opens today, Solis can be advertised as the winningest jockey in Southern California in the last year, and Alphabet Soup, should he run during the meet, will be accompanied by the fanfare that attends a winner of the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Perhaps the grass horses, as they have in the past, can fill in the blanks. Hollywood is offering more than $2 million in purses during a six-race turf spree over the Thanksgiving weekend, and the $500,000 Hollywood Turf Cup will be run Dec. 15.

The track will tiptoe into these main events, though. The best management could muster for today’s opener is the Jim Hill Stakes, a $60,000 turf race for 2-year-old fillies, and for the weekend the offerings are the Maker’s Mark Stakes and the Hollywood Prevue, both tuneups for the major 2-year-old stakes toward the end of the meet.

The highlight of the meet figures to be the $700,000 Matriarch at 1 1/4 miles on grass Dec. 1. The Yellow Ribbon at Santa Anita last Sunday further confused Eclipse voters who choose the year’s best female on grass. Donna Viola won the Yellow Ribbon at 9-1, but only after the Irish favorite, Timarida, was scratched because of a fever. And the race was so roughly run that some of the also-rans would like another chance.

Moreover, trainer Ron McAnally, who finished sixth in the Yellow Ribbon with Alpride, may revive Different, another standout, for the Matriarch. Undefeated in her only two starts on grass, Different ran on dirt in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Woodbine and finished third, which was the first loss for the Argentine-bred since Sid and Jenny Craig bought her.

Different’s only race on grass for the Craigs resulted in a win in the Beverly Hills Handicap at Hollywood in July, and this is the kind of year when two major victories might be enough at the polls. Timarida, a powerful winner of the Beverly D at Arlington International in August, is a probable for the Matriarch.

Behind the scenes, Hollywood Park will be running a meet without the combative John Brunetti on its board of directors. Brunetti, chairman of the Hialeah track in Florida, where he has problems of his own, joined the Hollywood board in 1993, dispatched a flock of his prized flamingos to California and quickly became a resident gadfly, rarely appreciated by Hollywood Park Chairman R.D. Hubbard.

Brunetti was dumped before he resigned, and has now refocused his energies on Santa Anita, another racetrack company in a state of flux. Brunetti says that he owns about 5% of stock in each company.

“I hope that anything that either track does is long-term,” Brunetti said. “I have two sons, and I hope to be able to eventually leave them with something substantial financially.

“Hubbard ran a puppet board. There was never much discussion. Meetings would would start with a motion and a vote. And most of the votes would go 10-1 against me. Hollywood Park got Woodlands [a moribund horse-greyhound facility in Kansas City, Kan.] as a result. The deal stunk.”

At Hollywood Park’s annual meeting last month, the Brunetti vacancy on the board was not filled. Left unsaid is what happens to Hialeah’s visiting flamingos.

Horse Racing Notes

Since leading last year’s Hollywood Park fall meeting, Alex Solis has led every major meet but Santa Anita’s last winter. Corey Nakatani beat him out by one victory. In the last five major meets--two each at Hollywood and Santa Anita and one at Del Mar--Solis has won 253 races, scoring with 18% of his mounts. Next highest during this period is Nakatani with 214. . . . Solis ranks eighth nationally with $9.2 million in purses. Jerry Bailey heads the list with a record $18.4 million.

There’s a chance that Serena’s Song will run one more time this year, at Churchill Downs. Serena’s Song’s 14th 1996 start was a second-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, leaving her $25,487 short of Dance Smartly’s earnings record for a distaffer. Serena’s Song, winless since June, has five seconds and a third in her last six starts.

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Hollypark Meeting at a Glance

DATES

* Today through Dec. 22.

SCHEDULE

* Wednesday through Sunday. Also, this Monday (Nov. 11)

POST TIMES

* 12:30 p.m. most days, 7 p.m. on Fridays except for Nov. 29 (12:30), and 11 a.m. on Thanksgiving (Nov. 28)

KEY RACES

* Nov. 29--Hollywood Turf Express, $200,000, 5 1/2 furlongs (turf); Miesque Stakes, $200,000, one mile (turf).

* Nov. 30--Citation Handicap, $300,000, 1 1/8 miles (turf); Generous Stakes, $250,000, one mile (turf).

* Dec. 1--Matriarch, $700,000, 1 1/4 miles (turf); Hollywood Derby, $500,000, 1 1/8 miles (turf).

* Dec. 14--Hollywood Starlet, $150,000, 1 1/16 miles.

* Dec. 15--Hollywood Futurity, $250,000, 1 1/16 miles.; Hollywood Turf Cup, $500,000, 1 1/2 miles (turf).