Silver Charm Has Stevens in the Mood for Fall Classic

As Gary Stevens left the winner’s circle at Santa Anita, Bob Lewis had a parting question.

“Uh, Gary,” Lewis said, “you won’t be too busy on Nov. 7, will you?”

Stevens doesn’t ride with a calendar, but that’s one date he has committed to memory.

“No,” he said to Lewis, punctuating his succinctness with a big smile.

Minutes before, Stevens had ridden Bob and Beverly Lewis’ Silver Charm to a 2 1/2-length victory in the $446,000 Goodwood Breeders’ Cup Handicap, beating Free House at equal weights of 124 pounds. The Lewises haven’t written their $480,000 check to make Silver Charm eligible for the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Churchill Downs on Nov. 7, but Bob Lewis seems to have already reached for his pen. Lewis has even calculated the increased Classic purse--$5.125 million--if the supplementary fees for Silver Charm and Gentlemen are added.

Silver Charm needed a solid race in the Goodwood to justify a $480,000 investment in Kentucky, and now the ballyhoo can begin for the showdown with Skip Away, who might need a win to nail down the horse-of-the-year title.

“We hope to be there with bells on,” Bob Lewis said. “This sets up a great day. I’m not going to be bold enough to say we’ll win, but we’re going to have a lot of fun.”

Silver Charm and several other Bob Baffert horses will be flown to Kentucky today. Churchill Downs is where the Lewises’ colt won the Kentucky Derby last year. His win Saturday, the 10th in 17 starts, was worth $262,800 and ballooned his career total to $5,213,230, making him the eighth horse to join the $5-million list.

“As long as he’s training like this, he’ll be ready,” said Baffert, Silver Charm’s trainer. “I won’t be backing off him. I’ll be training him hard in the next couple of weeks.”

Free House, whose two wins over Silver Charm came before last year’s Derby, has been outrun by Baffert’s horse in five other showdowns. In the Goodwood, Free House disposed of Score Quick at the top of stretch, but Silver Charm and Stevens were just off his right flank and they made their winning push with an eighth of a mile left. Ridden by Chris McCarron, Free House finished second, 2 1/2 lengths ahead of Score Quick, in the six-horse field. Silver Charm paid $3 as the favorite, running 1 1/8 miles in 1:47 1/5.

“On paper, it was basically a match race,” Stevens said, “and that was the way it turned out. It was kind of a tactical race with Chris and me. We just left it to our horses. I wanted to get outside Chris as soon as I could. Chris is a master tactician, and I knew what his plans would have been if I had been inside. When he outbroke me, it gave me a chance to get right on his tail, giving me the option to do what I wanted to do. I felt as if we were in control of everything from that point on.”

Baffert had envisioned Free House, breaking from the outside, running in third place behind Score Quick and Silver Charm through the early going. The roles of the two favorites were reversed, and afterward Baffert lauded Stevens for a heady ride.

“Gary rode him beautifully,” Baffert said. “That was one of his best rides on this horse. He just rode his own horse. If he gets into a fight with [Free House] early, both of them wind up running way too fast.”

Paco Gonzalez, Free House’s trainer, gave McCarron no specific pre-race instructions. Free House, winner of the Pacific Classic at Del Mar, was hoping to atone for a next-to-last finish in the Woodward at Belmont Park last month.

“He’s not finishing like he’s at the top of his game,” McCarron said. “He’s not finishing with a lot of gusto like he did [in the Pacific Classic].”

Stevens was candid in assessing Silver Charm’s race.

“I wouldn’t call this one of his best efforts,” he said. “In fact, I think he might have regressed a little bit off his last race. Truth is, he got a little bit tired the last 100 yards. . . . This should be the one that just turns the screws all the way tight. He should be peaking in the next one. Skip Away? I couldn’t be any more excited about the prospect.”

The Breeders’ Cup Classic is 1 1/4 miles, an eighth of a mile farther than the Goodwood. Skip Away won the Classic when it was run last year at Hollywood Park.

It would cost Free House’s owners, John Toffan and Trudy McCaffery, $800,000 to supplement to the Classic, because neither Free House nor his sire, Smokester, was nominated. Gonzalez said that the Goodwood ended Free House’s 4-year-old season and he’ll be brought back at Santa Anita this winter.

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Trainer Neil Drysdale said that he would recommend the Breeders’ Cup Sprint for Gold Land after the 7-year-old gelding’s three-quarter-length win in the $156,700 Ancient Title Breeders’ Cup Handicap.

Gold Land, ridden by Kent Desormeaux, won for the 12th time in 47 starts by rallying from last in the eight-horse field. He was more than eight lengths behind A.P. Assay after the first quarter-mile. A.P. Assay finished second and Kona Gold, the 13-10 favorite who was pinched on the rail, settled for fifth in his first stakes race.

Horse Racing Notes

The horses ahead of Silver Charm on the money list are: Cigar, $9,999,815; Skip Away, $9,906,360; Alysheba, $6,679,242; John Henry, $6,597,947; Singspiel, $5,952,825; Best Pal, $5,688,245; and Taiki Blizzard, $5,544,484. . . . Alex Solis reached the 3,000-win plateau by riding Secret Advice R.N to victory in the last race. Solis, 34, won his first race in Panama in 1981.

Favorite Trick, 1997 horse of the year, ran on grass for the first time and earned his way into the Breeders’ Cup Mile with a 3 1/2-length win in the Keeneland Breeders’ Cup Mile Stakes. Joyeux Danseur, undefeated this year but idle since May, finished in a dead heat for last in the five-horse field. . . . In another Keeneland race, Banshee Breeze, headed for the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, was a 12-length winner in the Three Chimneys Spinster. . . . Stakes winners at Belmont Park were Dixie Bayou in the Kelso Handicap; Successful Appeal in the Cowdin; Paved In Gold in the Astarita; and Punch Line in the Forest Hills Handicap. . . . Laffit Pincay, on Closed Escrow, finished second to U Can Do It in the $250,000 Princess Rooney Handicap at Calder.