It’s a Prince of a Day for Salman as Owner

Trainer Wayne Lukas was ruminating about the downside of running a heavily bet favorite in an important race.

“You lose one of these at 1-to-9 and there’s only one way to go,” he said. “You crash and burn.”

Sharp Cat and Jewel Princess weren’t exactly 1-9, but they were odds-on favorites Sunday at Santa Anita, where the only crashing and burning was done by the bettors who tried to beat them.

Sharp Cat, who, Lukas said, would be his best horse if the Kentucky Derby were being run today, was a methodical 5 1/2-length winner of the $208,800 Santa Anita Oaks. Half an hour later, Jewel Princess, trained by Wally Dollase, had to work much harder for a half-length win in the $300,000 Santa Margarita Handicap.

The talented distaffers were the worst-kept of secrets, the 3-year-old Sharp Cat paying $2.40 to win and the 5-year-old Jewel Princess returning $2.80. Corey Nakatani rode both.

Prince Ahmed Salman, a 38-year-old Saudia Arabian who went to school at UC Irvine, owns Sharp Cat and is a 50% owner of Jewel Princess.

“It may be 24 hours before I am actually able to think about how nice it is,” the prince said Sunday as he completed his revolving-door tour of the Santa Anita winner’s circle. “It is difficult to imagine that I can own two such magnificent fillies like these.”

Salman would seem to be in the game for the long haul. A member of Saudi Arabia’s royal family, he has a 16-acre farm in Bradbury and, with the assistance of his general manager, former trainer Richard Mulhall, he has been throwing a lot of money around at horse auctions.

Salman bought Sharp Cat, an unraced 2-year-old, at the Barretts sale in Pomona last year, and at the same sale last week he bought six more horses for $3.5 million, including a Seeking The Gold filly for $1 million and a colt by Woodman for $900,000. All six of those horses will go to the Lukas barn.

Now the speculation bubbles about whether Sharp Cat will continue to run against fillies or move on to competition against colts. The options are scheduled for April 5: the $750,000 Santa Anita Derby for all comers or the $500,000 Ashland Stakes for fillies at Keeneland in Lexington, Ky.

Salman, Mulhall and Lukas appear to be on the same page, which is to say that they will wait and see. “We’ll take a look at what kind of horses are running in the Santa Anita Derby,” Mulhall said.

Lukas’ style is to run fillies against colts. In 1988, he won the Santa Anita Oaks, the Santa Anita Derby and the Kentucky Derby with Winning Colors, and he’s won against males in other major 3-year-old races with Althea and Serena’s Song.

Other than the first race of her career and the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies in October at Woodbine in Toronto, the rest of Sharp Cat’s starts have been bull’s-eyes. The daughter of Storm Cat and In Neon, an Ack Ack mare, she has seven wins and one second, with $797,850 in purses, for 10 starts. Her ninth-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup was an aberration, after some ill-advised strategy prevented her from running loose up front the way she’s accustomed.

Take Lukas’ word, that mistake won’t be repeated. “We know now just to leave her alone and let her do her thing,” he said.

Sharp Cat’s way Sunday added up to her fourth consecutive win since the Breeders’ Cup debacle. She ran 1 1/16 miles in 1:42 1/5, with Queen Of Money running second and Double Park third in the five-horse field. Demon Acquire, who ran last, was overcome by the 85-degree heat and collapsed while being led back to the barn. She suffered a fractured skull and was euthanized.

Unlike Sharp Cat, Jewel Princess made the Breeders’ Cup a coronation day, winning the Distaff at Woodbine and clinching an Eclipse Award. Sunday’s effort was Jewel Princess’ second win in as many tries this season. Under 125 pounds, which was nine to 12 pounds more than her five opponents, she rallied from fifth place, coming extremely wide in the stretch to nail Top Rung in the final sixteenth of a mile.

The time for 1 1/8 miles was 1:49 1/5, and Jewel Princess earned $180,000 to move close to the $1.7-million mark. Top Rung was a neck better than Hidden Lake for second place.

Horse Racing Notes

Glitter Woman, who could run in the Ashland Stakes, won the $200,000 Bonnie Miss by 7 1/4 lengths at Gulfstream Park, where she was the 3-5 favorite. . . . Isitingood set another track record, running 1 1/8 miles in 1:48 2/5 as he won the $300,000 New Orleans Handicap by 2 1/2 lengths. Trainer Bob Baffert’s 6-year-old briefly held the world record for a mile on grass with a time of 1:32 at Santa Anita on Feb. 5. Atticus ran 1:31 4/5 on March 1.