Credit Put Stevens Over the Top

Just in time, common sense set in and Eclipse award voters will get the information they deserve when the ballots arrive next week.

For a while, it appeared that jockey Gary Stevens, trainer Bob Baffert and owners Bob and Beverly Lewis wouldn’t be credited for the money their Silver Charm earned in the $4- million Dubai World Cup in March.

The Daily Racing Form and the Equibase Co., which publish racing statistics, differed about whether the Dubai purse should count. The Racing Form, in its daily listings, has counted the $2.4-million winner’s purse for Silver Charm, but only Equibase added the money to the totals of Stevens, Baffert and the Lewises.

This week, the Form, which sends information to about 300 Eclipse voters, announced that it would include the Dubai purse. Anything else would have been nonsensical.

Either way, Baffert is almost $5 million ahead of Bill Mott on the trainers’ money list, but it behooves the voters to know that Stevens is No. 1 on the money list with a near-record total of $18.9 million. Without Dubai, Stevens would be No. 3 in the standings, behind Pat Day and Jerry Bailey. With Dubai, Stevens is $1.6 million ahead of Day and $1.8 million ahead of Bailey.

Stevens’ agent, Ron Anderson, has persisted in getting the Racing Form to include the Dubai World Cup and another race, worth $250,000 for first place, that Stevens won on the same day.

The Lewises are second, behind Frank Stronach, on the owners’ money list, but without the money Silver Charm earned in Dubai, they would be No. 6.

Regarding record-keeping for 1999, the Racing Form said that no decision has been made about Dubai, but once that race was included, as it has been since its inception in 1996, there’s no turning back. Anything else and you’d be rewriting history. Cigar, for example, wouldn’t be the all-time record-holder for purses without his Dubai money from 1996.

“All of racing is going in an international direction,” Bob Lewis said. “There have been talks going on for more than a year about creating a series of international races that will bring all of the world’s best horses together. Not counting foreign earnings would defeat the purpose of all that. If [North American] trainers, jockeys and owners win races out of the country, they ought to receive credit, the same as their horses do.”

In the days when the Racing Form was publishing the American Racing Manual--an annual statistical compendium that is scheduled to be revived--jockeys’ records were followed by this footnote: “Records include available statistics for races ridden in foreign countries.”

The Dubai statistics are certainly available. Sheik Mohammed, who heads the Dubai Racing Club, has even made it easy. He has converted the dirhams into dollars, so they come out to an even $4 million.

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Eddie Delahoussaye is quickly closing in on the 6,000-win mark. He won three races at Hollywood Park on Friday, reaching 5,987. Only 13 jockeys have won 6,000 or more. . . . Last weekend’s 2-year-old stakes were tough on horses. Premier Property, favored in the Hollywood Futurity, was destroyed when he shattered a leg after finishing third, and Tactical Cat, winner of the race, came out of it sore and has been sidelined indefinitely. . . . The Hollywood Park meet ends Monday. On Sunday, trainer Richard Mandella will saddle Puerto Madero as he tries to win the Native Diver Handicap for the third consecutive year.