Big Three Ready for Big Years

Skip Away, Gentlemen and Silver Charm, three of last year’s best horses, will all be running Saturday, though not against one another. The action for Gentlemen and Silver Charm will be only an hour apart at Santa Anita; Skip Away will be busy a continent away, in Florida.

It was difficult getting these three horses together last year. Except for the Breeders’ Cup at Hollywood Park, Skip Away stayed in the East, and by the time he reached California, neither Gentlemen nor Silver Charm was ready to run. Gentlemen traveled to Maryland in May to beat Skip Away in the Pimlico Special, but a lot of good it did him. Eclipse award voters paid particular attention to Skip Away’s two season-ending wins, and he was a 23-vote winner over Gentlemen in the balloting for best older horse.

This year, there could be some memorable battles involving the three horses that have earned more than $11.5 million, but for now the preliminaries will have to do.

At Santa Anita, six 4-year-olds will face Silver Charm in the $500,000 Strub Stakes, and Gentlemen has five rivals in the $300,000 San Antonio Handicap. At Gulfstream Park, nine horses will take a shot at Skip Away in the $300,000 Donn Handicap.

The Strub and the San Antonio head the bill at Santa Anita, but the 3-year-olds are warming up for the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on May 2, and five of them get their first real test in the $100,000 San Vicente, which launches Saturday’s stakes tripleheader.

Years ago, the seven-furlong San Vicente was part of the groundwork for Swaps, Lucky Debonair and Majestic Prince in the Derby, and last year Silver Charm, before bagging the Derby and the Preakness, won the stake. Bob Baffert, who trains Silver Charm, this time is sending out the lightly raced Pleasant Drive.

For Gentlemen, 1997 ended prematurely because of a throat ulcer and virus. He hasn’t run since a dismal fifth-place finish on grass at Woodbine on Sept. 20. Otherwise, running only on dirt, he won four of five, the only loss coming in the Santa Anita Handicap.

The forecast is wet, but Richard Mandella, who trains Gentlemen, and Baffert indicated that an off-track will not keep their major horses in the barn.

“Gentlemen broke a track record at Hollywood Park [in the 1996 Native Diver Handicap] on a wet track, so he should be able to handle it,” Mandella said. “As long as this track is safe, he’ll run.”

Baffert said that although none of Silver Charm’s 11 starts have been on an off-track, he has trained well in the mornings on off-tracks.

Don’t look for Joe LaCombe, the owner of Favorite Trick, and trainer Pat Byrne to be together when the Eclipse awards are handed out Tuesday night at a black-tie dinner in Rancho Mirage.

Byrne, who trained Favorite Trick as the colt won eight straight races last year, took a private job with Frank Stronach in late December and LaCombe sent Favorite Trick to trainer Bill Mott a few days later. Both Mott and LaCombe have said that Favorite Trick did little for two months after the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, making this year’s Kentucky Derby a “tight fit.” Favorite Trick, based at Payson Park in South Florida, had his first workout last Monday and is scheduled to make his first start of the year in the Swale at Gulfstream on March 14.

In an interview Wednesday with Maryjean Wall of the Lexington Herald-Leader, Byrne said: “The horse was away 48 days. He had been jogging a week when Mott got him. What was I supposed to do, not give him time off? He’d been going since [the fall of 1996] without a break. If I didn’t give him time off, I’d be called a butcher. Then Joe goes to a guy [Mott] who historically is known for not getting horses to the Derby. They give this horse to a guy who doesn’t want to go to the Derby. He breaks out in hives when you mention the D-word. When you’ve got from Jan. 1 to May and you can’t get a horse to the Derby in that time, there’s something wrong.”

Mott, who trained two-time horse of the year Cigar, has been training for 25 years and is on the ballot for the Racing Hall of Fame this year, but he’s had only one Derby starter.

“[Not wanting to run in the Derby] would be a ridiculous assumption,” Mott said. “I’m not going to sacrifice a horse just to get to the race. I don’t believe I ever had a horse that fit the profile of a Derby winner: a horse ready to win at a mile and a quarter on the first Saturday in May.”

Favorite Trick was voted champion 2-year-old male and it’s between him and Skip Away for the horse-of-the-year title, which will be announced Tuesday.

Horse Racing Notes

Orville N Wilbur’s, Sea Of Secrets, Search Me and Late Edition will join Pleasant Drive in the San Vicente. . . . Rio Oro, winner of the San Miguel on Jan. 10, is missing the San Vicente because of a fever. . . . Megan’s Interco went over the $1-million mark with a win Thursday. The 9-year-old gelding has 16 wins and 10 seconds in 34 starts.