Breeders’ Cup Not Yet in Plans for Free House

Trainer Paco Gonzalez celebrated Free House’s victory in the Pacific Classic by sharing a van with the gray colt as he was shipped back to his barn at Santa Anita on Saturday night.

Horse and horseman returned to Santa Anita before 9:30 p.m., less than six hours after Free House’s four-length cakewalk in the $1-million race. No six-course gourmet dinner and late-night champagne toasts for Gonzalez, the consummate trainer. He gets to know his horses the old-fashioned way, by not straying far from their stalls.

“Paco did a fabulous job with this horse,” said trainer Richard Mandella, whose Gentlemen finished second to Free House. “I watched Free House when he was at Hollywood Park [this summer]. You could see him getting better and better. He was a lot more mature.”

Free House needed only one prep to win at 1 1/4 miles for the first time.

“Only the writers felt he couldn’t get a mile and a quarter,” Gonzalez said. “Distance was never a question to me. He ran a mile and a half [in last year’s Belmont] and got beat less than two lengths.”

For any other horse, a win in the Pacific Classic might be the kickoff to a fall campaign that leads to the $4-million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Churchill Downs in November, but this does not appear to be in the cards for Gonzalez and the colt’s co-owners, John Toffan and Trudy McCaffery. Neither his sire Smokester nor Free House were nominated to the Breeders’ Cup, and the supplementary fee to run would be $800,000, an extravagant outlay considering that the winning purse is less than $2.3 million. Anything less than second place and Toffan and McCaffery lose money.

“Maybe we could syndicate the entry fee,” Toffan said in a light moment Saturday.

What is likely to happen is that Free House will be sent to New York to see how he stacks up against Skip Away, last year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic winner and considered the best horse in training this year, in either the 1 1/8-mile Woodward on Sept. 18 at Belmont Park or the 1 1/4-mile Jockey Club Gold Cup on Oct. 10. Skip Away’s next race will be the Iselin Handicap on Aug. 30 at Monmouth Park.

“Right now, the Breeders’ Cup would be a tough call,” Toffan said. “To even think about it, we’d have to beat Skip Away someplace along the line.”

Touch Gold, a poor fifth in the Pacific Classic, will return to his base at Churchill Downs on Tuesday, with his trainer, Patrick Byrne, considering the Woodward and the Jockey Club Gold Cup.

“We’ll just have to toss this race out,” Byrne said. “He was never traveling 100%. There was no time when he was comfortable. I knew we were in trouble the first or second jump. The ground seemed to break out from under him at the start and he just floundered from there. Good horses shouldn’t have excuses over any racetrack. This is a good horse, but for some reason or other he just didn’t handle the racetrack.”

Mandella said that he had no immediate plans for Gentlemen or Puerto Madero, who finished fifth. Puerto Madero was stiff Sunday, having wrenched his back in the race. Gentlemen, not eligible for the Breeders’ Cup, is a race or two from finishing a career that’s produced purses of $3.3 million.

Horse Racing Notes

Ladies Din, winner of the Oceanside Stakes on opening day, gave Gary Stevens his 10th stakes victory of the meet when he came between horses to win the La Jolla Handicap. Stevens has a shot at the Del Mar record of 12 stakes wins, which he shares with Laffit Pincay (1976) and Chris McCarron (1995). Stevens won his 12 last year.