Florida Invader Formal Gold Could Spoil Gentlemen’s Plans

Except for the occasional exception, such as Urgent Request, who knocked logic into a cocked hat 1995, it’s unusual for a horse to win the Santa Anita Handicap without having raced over the track.

Urgent Request broke down all the barriers. Not only had he never run at Santa Anita, he had never run on dirt. He hadn’t run in the United States, for that matter. And he hadn’t raced anywhere in three months before his Big ‘Cap victory.

Broad Brush, a Maryland-based horse, won the Santa Anita Handicap in 1987, but he was more a commuter than a shipper. Trainer Dick Small brought Broad Brush to California for the Strub series, took him home, then brought him back to beat everyone--Ferdinand and Snow Chief included--in the Big ‘Cap.

That was then and this is now, and the now of the 60th Santa Anita Handicap, which will be run today, is that Formal Gold, another invader, will be trying to win the track’s premier race for older horses.

For trainer Bill Perry and owner Jack Murphy, it’s an ambitious undertaking, because this Big ‘Cap features Gentlemen, who is 8-5 on the morning line and could become only the second odds-on winner of the race in the last 17 years.

Urgent Request trained over the Santa Anita dirt track, and Broad Brush ran twice over it, but Formal Gold has seen the layout hardly at all. He took an overnight flight from Florida and arrived at Santa Anita on Friday morning. If the track charged for barn space, this colt would get the day rate.

“I’m told that if you bring a horse from the East to run in California, you either get there weeks ahead of time or come at the last minute,” Perry said. “We decided to come at the last minute.”

Going west to east, trainer Wayne Lukas won a lot of stakes in the 1980s by just dropping in. “Wayne off the plane” was the slogan somebody coined. With two homebodies--Marlin and Editor’s Note--Lukas will be trying to win his second Big ‘Cap today.

Formal Gold, who is 6-1 on the morning line, completed all of his serious work for the Big ‘Cap in Florida at Hialeah, where Perry stables the horses he has been running at Gulfstream Park this winter.

Formal Gold upset Skip Away in the $300,000 Donn Handicap at Gulfstream on Feb. 8. That led to the options of the Big ‘Cap or the $500,000 Gulfstream Park Handicap, which was run Saturday, when Skip Away was beaten again, this time by Mount Sassafras.

“We like the money that California’s putting up,” said Murphy, an industrialist from Quincy, Mass. “Besides the purse, there’s the bonus.”

MGM Grand, the sponsor of the $3-million bonus, is happy that Murphy has brought his horse, because in 1996, the first year of the three-race series, Cigar missed the Big ‘Cap because of a foot injury and the race turned into strictly a local skirmish. If a horse sweeps this year’s Big ‘Cap, Hollywood Gold Cup and Pacific Classic at Del Mar, he earns an extra $3 million. And short of that, there’s a $500,000 bonus for horses that run in at least two of the races and accumulate points for high finishes.

“We were thinking about coming out here even before the Donn,” said Perry, 49, who has been in racing for 30 years. “We kept up the payments [for the Big ‘Cap] before the horse won the Donn, but we had to wait and see what he did in that race before we made up our minds.”

Perry concedes that everything had to be right for Formal Gold to beat Skip Away, last year’s champion 3-year-old male, by 1 1/4 lengths three weeks ago.

“Skip Away still ran a great race,” Perry said. “He was spotting us 10 pounds. He had been away from the races for four months. And he couldn’t get to the fence, which was the place to be on that track that day.”

In many precincts, including California, Formal Gold’s jockey, Joe Bravo, 26, is Joe Who? But he has won most of the meet titles at New Jersey tracks since 1991, and last year his horses earned $6.1 million, which ranked him 16th nationally.

Bravo had ridden Formal Gold only once before the Donn, and all they did on a June day at Monmouth Park was win a six-furlong maiden race by 18 3/4 lengths.

You wonder what Bravo did wrong, but Mike Smith, one of New York’s best, was aboard for Formal Gold’s next race, a mere 6 3/4-length win at Belmont Park.

Still, Formal Gold hadn’t won a stake before the Donn, while piling up more than $335,000 in purses as he ran close seconds in the Pennsylvania Derby and the Meadowlands Cup. He also picked up $80,000 for finishing fifth in the $4-million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Woodbine.

Formal Gold is a Canadian-bred son of Black Tie Affair, the Breeders’ Cup Classic winner and horse of the year in 1991; and Ingoldsby, a Screen King mare who earlier produced Maple Lake, a stakes winner in Canada. The first time Formal Gold was sold, he brought $62,000 as a yearling. Then Murphy bought him for $75,000 at a Saratoga auction for unraced 2-year-olds.

“He had a knee that looked like somebody had whacked him with a baseball bat,” Murphy said. “A lot of people thought he had a tendon injury. But we had a [veterinarian] look at him, and while he had a bad leg, it wasn’t as bad as a lot of them thought.”

Sore shins kept Formal Gold away from the races until last June, when he was a 3-year-old. Now he has run eight times, over six tracks, and has five wins and overall purses of $515,100.

“He’s the bargain of the year,” Jack Murphy said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Big ‘Cap Field

* Post: Approx. 3:15 p.m.

Listed in order of post position

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Horse Jockey Wt. Odds Gentlemen Stevens 123 8-5 Just Java Blanc 113 30-1 Zanferrier Delahoussaye 112 30-1 Kingdom Found Solis 115 20-1 Sandpit Nakatani 121 5-1 Editor’s Note Garcia 119 20-1 Chequer Black 114 30-1 Formal Gold Bravo 115 6-1 Marlin Bailey 117 6-1 Siphon Flores 120 7-2 The Barking Shark McCrrn 114 30-1

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