Claim Earns This Team Style Points

From his hilltop home in Albany, Calif., Don Porter can look out the window and see Golden Gate Fields. It’s a track that had never brought the 84-year-old trainer a horse worth talking about.

But all that has changed recently for Porter, after his Sept. 29 claim of A Matter Of Style from Jerry Hollendorfer, the undisputed king of Northern California racing. The price for A Matter Of Style, a 3-year-old gelding with bad knees, was a bottom-of-the-bucket $6,250, but Porter still thought he was throwing money away.

“It takes a lot of intestinal fortitude to make this claim,” Porter told his owner, Irwin Olian, before the race. “Hollendorfer’s no dummy.”

In other words, A Matter Of Style wouldn’t have been in that race for that price if his trainer wasn’t trying to unload him.

“I made the decision,” said Olian, a Venice stockbroker enamored of the potential of Avenue Of Flags, A Matter Of Style’s sire and one of the hottest stallions in California.

In A Matter Of Style’s last race for Hollendorfer, the day of the claim, he won by six lengths, and he hasn’t been beaten since. He has added six wins for Porter and Olian, and counting two wins under Hollendorfer, A Matter Of Style has won eight in a row, the longest streak in Northern California since Barry Chancy, a 5-year-old gelding, won eight in a row in 1992. A Matter Of Style is getting a breather now, but the goal is the Bay Meadows-Golden Gate record of 11 in a row, set by Hap Logue in 1973.

“A Matter Of Style is my little John Henry,” Olian said.

A Matter Of Style could have been claimed Sept. 7, the race before Hollendorfer lost him, for $8,000. Running for only the third time, he broke his maiden that day. Since Porter took him, he was vulnerable to other claims, running twice for $8,000 and once each for $12,500, $16,000 and $20,000. But there were no takers, and after win No. 7 in the streak, in the $20,000 race on Dec. 29, Olian didn’t want to risk losing him. So they moved him into allowance company at Golden Gate, and he won again, by 1 1/4 lengths. A Matter Of Style has divided his eight wins evenly between Golden Gate and nearby Bay Meadows.

Russell Baze, who rides many of Hollendorfer’s horses, rode A Matter Of Style for the first two wins in the streak, and Victor Miranda has been aboard for the last six. All eight of A Matter Of Style’s wins have come at six furlongs, but a pedigree analyst has written Olian to say that according to the 4-year-old’s bloodlines, he should have the “stamina to race well beyond one mile.” Top horses of the past 40 years run through A Matter Of Style’s pedigree, and his grandsire is Seattle Slew, who swept the Triple Crown in 1977.

A Matter Of Style was bred by John and Betty Mabee, who bred and raced Best Pal and whose Golden Eagle Farm in Ramona, Calif., won an Eclipse award for breeding in 1991.

A Matter Of Style’s career began under trainer Richard Mandella in December 1995, when he finished second in a $32,000 maiden claimer at Santa Anita. He underwent surgery on a knee after that race, and A Matter Of Style didn’t run again for eight months. He was a well-beaten fifth in another $32,000 claimer at Del Mar, and then was sent to Hollendorfer at Bay Meadows.

“Irv [Olian] picks out his own horses, and I go along,” Porter said. “He was a sore horse when we got him, and he had bad knees. We’ve been lucky. We’ve run him hard. He’s not the soundest of horses, but he’s what I call raceable-sound. He’s a very kind horse, and he takes care of himself. I’ve only worked him once since we’ve had him.”

A Matter Of Style races for Tigertail Ranch, but don’t waste your time trying to find that property on any map of thoroughbred farms. Olian, a Princeton man, made up the name, using the nickname of his school’s athletic teams.

After college, Olian worked around the barn for Noble Threewitt at Santa Anita, and it was Threewitt who recommended Porter, whose eight-horse stable is half made up of Olian’s horses. Inspired by his success with A Matter Of Style, Olian bought the horse’s 2-year-old half-brother (same dam) from the Mabees, and he recently claimed, for $11,500, a mare called Fresh Parsley that will be bred to Avenue Of Flags.

Horse Racing Notes

Gentlemen will break from the inside and Alphabet Soup has the stall beside him for Sunday’s $300,000 San Antonio Handicap at Santa Anita. The others entered are Kingdom Found, Just Java and Eltish. . . . Favored Boston Harbor drew the No. 6 post for the $100,000 Santa Catalina on Sunday. That field, in post-position order: Bagshot, Flew The City, Swiss Yodeler, Falkenham, Hello, Boston Harbor, Carmen’s Baby and Greed Is Good. . . . This is the lineup for Sunday’s other stake, the $500,000 Strub: Mateo, Editor’s Note, The Barking Shark, Ready To Order, Mirolbolant, Victory Speech, Zanferrier, Phantom Quest, Ambivalent and Northern Afleet. . . . Apprentice Nate Chaves is leaving Santa Anita to ride in New York. Chaves rode 22 winners at Hollywood Park’s fall meet and has nine wins this winter at Santa Anita. . . . Cat’s Cradle’s win in Friday’s feature gives her three victories in four starts on the grass at Santa Anita.