IT’S POST TIME

A year ago, Jimmy Croll and Sonny Hine were talking about horse of the year, which isn’t a bad topic for trainers with top horses.

“Run your horse [Skip Away] in the Breeders’ Cup,” Croll said. “You might never get the chance to get horse of the year again. I didn’t need the Breeders’ Cup to win the title [with Holy Bull in 1994]. But you do.”

Hine said he would have followed Croll’s advice, but he was hospitalized with kidney stones, Skip Away lost some important training time and the horse didn’t run at Woodbine near Toronto.

So, for the second consecutive year, horse-of-the-year honors went to Cigar, whose earlier accomplishments were enough to overcome a third-place finish in the Classic.

But there is no statute of limitations on good advice, and Hine is heeding the year-old suggestion. Carolyn Hine, the trainer’s wife and owner of Skip Away, has put up a $480,000 supplementary payment and the horse will run today in the $4.4-million Classic, the richest race ever run and the headliner on the seven-race Breeders’ Cup card at Hollywood Park.

Horse of the year is determined by a vote of 250 to 300 turf writers, track racing secretaries and Daily Racing Form personnel. They usually look at the Breeders’ Cup results to sort out the candidates, but this year, if Skip Away, Touch Gold or the undefeated 2-year-old colt, Favorite Trick, don’t win, the electorate is likely to consider Gentlemen and Silver Charm. Illness--and perhaps in Silver Charm’s case, a supplementary fee of $480,000--prevented the two of them from running today, but their accomplishments stack up with the three horses that are competing.

Here are capsule report cards on the five candidates:

* Favorite Trick--The only races he hasn’t won are the ones he hasn’t run in. In Kentucky and New York, he has won seven in a row, one of them a three-length triumph at Keeneland last month in his first race around two turns.

His pedigree of sprinters doesn’t spell 1 1/4 miles and the Kentucky Derby, but the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile is only 1 1/16 miles. Trainer Patrick Byrne is confident.

“He’s already outrun his pedigree,” Byrne said. “Phone Trick [the sire] never won a Grade I race.”

* Touch Gold--This is the horse that recovered from a near spill in the Preakness and beat Silver Charm in the Belmont, ending a bid for the $5-million bonus that goes with a Triple Crown sweep.

Touch Gold won the Haskell Handicap at Monmouth Park a month after the Belmont, and a victory today would erase that big hiccup in New Jersey, when he was last in the Pegasus Handicap.

* Skip Away--”Money should count for something,” Hine said.

He means that Skip Away has earned $1.8 million this year, more than any of the other finalists but Gentlemen.

First place in the Classic is worth $2,288,000, which would shove Skip Away over the $4-million mark. If he doesn’t win, however, Skip Away will close the book on 1997 with only three wins in 11 starts.

* Gentlemen--Voters could excuse his last start, a misadventure on grass in Canada just as the horse’s throat problems were beginning. Before that, he won every start except the Santa Anita Handicap, the victories including the Special at Pimlico, where he beat Skip Away; the Hollywood Gold Cup, and the Pacific Classic. Earnings for the year: $2.7 million.

* Silver Charm--A horse that wins two-thirds of the Triple Crown, in a year with no Cigar winning everything in sight, has a shot at the title. Silver Charm had three victories and three seconds in six starts.

Early in the year, Free House beat Silver Charm twice at Santa Anita, but trainer Bob Baffert’s colt turned the tables in the Triple Crown.

Based on a small sample from some of the voters, these are the scenarios:

* If Skip Away wins today, he, Gentlemen or Silver Charm wins the title. The edge would go to Skip Away, because Gentlemen and Silver Charm probably would cancel each other out.

* If Touch Gold wins today, either he or Gentlemen would be champion. Voters could reason that Touch Gold would also have won the Preakness if he hadn’t had a bad trip. And Silver Charm would be penalized for not running in the Breeders’ Cup.

* If Skip Away and Touch Gold don’t win today, and Favorite Trick does, the race boils down to Favorite Trick, Gentlemen and Silver Charm.

Again, Gentlemen and Silver Charm might cancel out in that three-way vote. There hasn’t been a horse of the year from the 2-year-old ranks since Secretariat in 1972, and Hine knows why.

“Horses in the handicap division have to carry weight and give it to other horses,” he said. “The 2-year-olds, in effect, are running in restricted races. They’re only running against their own division.”

* If Skip Away, Touch Gold and Favorite Trick all lose today, the title goes to either Gentlemen or Silver Charm in a close vote.

Formal Gold, who would have been the Classic favorite before he was injured, outfinished Skip Away in four of six tries, but missing the Breeders’ Cup will squelch his title chances.

A victory by Deputy Commander or Behrens in the Classic would close out impressive years, but what hurts is that neither colt ran in the Triple Crown.

There will be the requisite campaigning after today’s dust settles, but in that department, as Samuel Goldwyn used to say, include Gentlemen’s trainer, Richard Mandella, out.

“Gentlemen’s my horse of the year, but that’s just personal,” Mandella said. “Let’s leave it up to the voters. Lay out the list of the horses after the races have been run and rate them on class, form, speed and longevity, all those things. They’ll come up with the right answer.

“One thing about Gentlemen’s record, though, is the names of the horses that finished behind him. That’s an impressive list.”