King Of The Heap Makes Splash in Opener

Trainer Wally Dollase could think of no worse omens.

Sitting in his box seat early in the afternoon on opening day at Santa Anita, Dollase took a hit on the head from an uncaring pigeon.

“Then I went to the men’s room to wash it off, and there were no towels,” Dollase said. “So there I am, standing there with this stuff on my head and my hair’s wringing wet too.”

It was for Cincy Dollase, the trainer’s wife, to suggest that a bad hair day could still turn out good, and on Thursday this was sound advice. Wally Dollase’s King Of The Heap, lightly regarded at 12-1, came from last in the nine-horse field to register a half-length upset win in the $214,300 Malibu Stakes.

The opening-day on-track crowd, 30,827, was the lowest for a day after Christmas since 1954. Off-track turnouts brought overall attendance to 50,696, about 1,000 more than last year, and the handle of $13 million was up $1.1 million from last year but down $3 million from 1994.

King Of The Heap’s unexpected win, which came at the expense of the 11-10 favorite, Victory Speech, who finished sixth, set off what looked like an early New Year’s Eve celebration in the winner’s circle. The six owners of King Of The Heap are new to the game, and the colt’s first stakes win sent them into orbit.

“We’ve had a lot of patience with our horse and this is the greatest,” said one of them, Dominic Sabatino Jr., who was a running back for the University of Kentucky in the early 1980s and at one time worked around such great horses as Secretariat and Spectacular Bid at Claiborne Farm.

The owners bought King Of The Heap at auction for $75,000, and named him after their trainer, Blake Heap. But by early summer, they were unhappy with the colt’s development and sent him to Dollase, a high-profile trainer whose barn has earned more than $3 million in purses this year.

King Of The Heap won two of six starts for Heap, breaking his maiden at Santa Anita in his first race, in October 1995, and running second to Cobra King in the Sunny Slope two weeks later. He was kicked in the foot in a race at Bay Meadows in March of this year and hadn’t run in almost seven months when Dollase brought him back this fall. In his first two starts for his new barn, King Of The Heap ran second at Golden Gate Fields and won an allowance race at Hollywood Park.

“I had him ready,” Dollase said, “but the ride [by Kent Desormeaux] made the difference. Kent had a lot of confidence and I told him the only way we’re going to win this is from far out of it, and he rode him perfectly.”

Breaking from the outside post, King Of The Heap was last, more than eight lengths behind, after half a mile. At the head of the stretch, there were still six horses ahead of him, but the gap had been whittled to only a couple of lengths and Desormeaux found clear sailing on the outside.

“It took him a while to get his legs underneath him,” Desormeaux said. “It worked out good, though, because the pace was honest in front of him. When I called on him, he gave me his life. At the three-eighths pole, I wasn’t that confident. But when we straightened away in the stretch, he switched [lead feet] and leveled off his stride, and then there wasn’t any doubt that he’d win.”

Hesabull, the only one of the early leaders to last, finished second, half a length ahead of Northern Afleet. King Of The Heap, running seven furlongs in 1:21 4/5, paid $26.40 to win and earned $134,300.

Victory Speech, a well-traveled colt who has won four stakes in New York and California this year, ran close to the pace behind Sandtrap, whose fast fractions included 1:08 4/5 for the first six furlongs.

“This was the wrong scenario,” said Wayne Lukas, who trains Victory Speech. “That eight and change had to help somebody. My horse can’t run eight and change and still finish.”

Hesabull, who hadn’t run since he finished third, behind Victory Speech and Prince Of Thieves, in the Swaps at Hollywood Park in July, looked like a winner at the sixteenth pole.

“I think he probably needed the race,” jockey Eddie Delahoussaye said. “He had a long layoff and he sure ran super. I thought we had them at the head of the stretch.”

Although King Of The Heap has run as far as a mile only once, Dollase believes he can become a two-turn horse. Dollase turned him out for three months at a farm shortly after the colt arrived at the barn. The win Thursday reminded Dollase of something Frank “Jimmy” Kilroe, the late Santa Anita executive, told him when he began training about 30 years ago.

“Mr. Kilroe told me that it’s the last three-eighths of a mile, not the first three-eighths, that counts,” Dollase said. “And he was right too. He was a great man, and that was great advice.”

Horse Racing Notes

Rexy Sexy, winner of the California Cup Juvenile Fillies, is 5-2 on the morning line for today’s filly division of the California Breeders’ Champion Stakes. . . . In the open division Saturday, In Excessive Bull, winner of the Hollywood Prevue and third in the Hollywood Futurity, heads a 14-horse field. Also entered is Princely Price, who was second to Carmen’s Baby in the Cal Cup Juvenile. . . . No negotiations are scheduled in the standoff between Santa Anita and the Nevada race books. The Southern California simulcasting television signal has been dark since opening day at Hollywood Park.