As the Gray Running Out Front, Skip Away Is Easy to Find

His wife Carolyn has trouble seeing with her right eye and wanted a gray horse that would be easy to follow.

His partner didn’t want to take a $30,000 chance on a horse that had a bum ankle.

That is how trainer Sonny Hine came to buy Skip Away--at a $7,500 discount--and then raced him to $8.3 million in earnings with Carolyn Hine as the horse’s owner.

“It’s been quite a deal,” Sonny Hine said. “I got the horse for only $22,500, I got rid of my partner and now my wife can go to Rodeo Drive.”

Here to run Skip Away in Sunday’s $1-million Hollywood Gold Cup, Carolyn Hine is close to Rodeo, but maybe her husband needn’t worry.

“Jewelry and furs don’t give me nearly as much pleasure as this horse does,” she said.

The Hines, who met on a blind date that has led to a marriage of almost 36 years, are on a twofold mission with Skip Away. Their goal is to break Cigar’s earnings record, and win the horse-of-the-year title that eluded them in 1997 when Favorite Trick, an undefeated 2-year-old, prevailed in a close vote.

For a while, Hine, 67, took the horse-of-the-year vote personally, but now he acts as though the disappointment is behind him.

“It’s like today’s fish,” Hine said, perhaps twisting a metaphor. “You wrap it in yesterday’s newspaper.”

In a 31-race career, Skip Away has run at Hollywood Park once, and that win in last November’s Breeders’ Cup Classic--after the Hines had supplemented him into the race at a cost of $480,000--didn’t carry the usual clout because several top contenders, including Gentlemen and Silver Charm, didn’t run.

Gentlemen and Silver Charm finished third and fourth, respectively, in the horse-of-the-year vote, and a Gold Cup showdown involving them and Skip Away was in the works until Wednesday, when Silver Charm was taken out of the Gold Cup because of a fever.

Skip Away, who arrived at Hollywood Park from New York on Thursday, has been made the even-money favorite in an eight-horse field. Gentlemen, running as an entry with Puerto Madero, is next on the morning line at 7-5 as he tries to win the Gold Cup for the second consecutive year.

With first place worth $600,000, a win by Skip Away would boost his earnings to $8,906,360, which would leave him about $1 million short of Cigar, who was retired in 1996 with $9,999,815. Sonny Hine has said that his biggest thrill in more than 40 years of training was the day Skip Away beat Cigar by a head in the 1996 Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park.

“Skippy,” as the Hines call him, was bred in Florida by New Englander Anna Marie Barnhart, who began reducing her racing stock after the death of her husband, an owner of several fast-food restaurants. As an unraced 2-year-old, Skip Away was consigned by Hilmer Schmidt to a Calder sale in South Florida in 1995.

The gray horse is a son of Skip Trial, whom Hine successfully trained, and Ingot Way, a mare who won two minor stakes and three other races in 37 starts. The color of Skip Away was right for Carolyn Hine, who is afflicted with an optic tic, and the breeding was right for her husband, who in the 1980s won $1.8 million with Skip Trial, including a victory in the Haskell Handicap and two wins in the Gulfstream Park Handicap.

The bidding stopped at $30,000 for Skip Away, with Sonny Hine signing the sales ticket. Afterward, though, X-rays showed that the colt had a chipped ankle.

“Would you consider taking him for less?” Schmidt asked Hine.

“In a minute,” Hine said.

They settled for $7,500 less, about what it might cost for surgery on the ankle.

Meantime, Hine’s partner in the original sale, who has gone unnamed, said to the trainer:

“I don’t want to take a chance on a cripple.”

Skip Away never did need surgery; time cured his ankle problem.

“I really wasn’t worried about that part,” Hine said. “His sire, who I bought for $25,000, had chips in a couple of ankles, and it didn’t seem to bother him.”

Hine won’t stand at the barn and tell you now that he knew he was getting a major at cut-rate prices.

“Hell,” Hine said, “you never know about horses until you run them.”

Recently the Hines were offered $20 million for Skip Away and unblinkingly said no thanks.

“We just like to run him and enjoy it,” Sonny Hine said. “My father [a part-time trainer] used to say, ‘If you got as much as you need, what good does it do to have a nickel more?’ ”

Carolyn Hine would like to run Skip Away next year, as a 6-year-old.

“I’m not sure I can accept the day he quits running,” she said. “But when I ask Sonny about another year, he just looks at me.”

They have traveled the country together because of Skip Away.

“When I fell in love with Sonny, I fell in love with his business too,” Carolyn Hine said. “We’re a team.”

Horse Racing Notes

At Thursday’s post-position draw, R.D. Hubbard, chairman of Hollywood Park and principal owner of Gentlemen, said, “I realize we don’t know how to run a track at Hollywood Park, but we’ll still put on a good show Sunday.” The remark was in reference to recent criticism of Hollywood Park by Bob Baffert, the trainer of Silver Charm. . . . Jerry Bailey, who rides Skip Away, will be aboard Escena today in the Vanity Handicap. The 5-year-old mare, who has earned $1.6 million, is on a three-race win streak.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Hollywood Gold Cup

When: Sunday.

Where: Hollywood Park.

Time: 4:20 p.m. post.

TV: ESPN

Purse: $1 million.

Distance: 1 1/4 miles.

In post position order: *--*

Horse Jockey Odds Floriselli Corey Nakatani 20-1 Skip Away Jerry Bailey 1-1 a-Gentlemen Gary Stevens 7-5 Bagshot Alex Solis 15-1 Budroyale Matt Garcia 15-1 Don’t Blame Rio Frank Alvarado 20-1 a-Puerto Madero Kent Desormeaux 7-5 Mud Route Chris McCarron 6-1

*--*

a-Hubbard & Sutherland entry