Real Quiet to Keep Distance From San Diego Handicap

Even before the weights were assigned for next Saturday’s San Diego Handicap, trainer Bob Baffert announced that Real Quiet wouldn’t run in the $250,000 race here.

“It’s the distance,” Baffert said Saturday. “[The San Diego Handicap’s] mile and a sixteenth just isn’t his distance. This is a high-profile horse, and he’d probably get beat at that distance.”

Baffert plans to bring Real Quiet into the Pacific Classic off workouts. The $1-million Classic, at 1 1/4 miles, will be run on Aug. 29.

“He’s an Eclipse Award-winning trainer, so he knows what he’s doing,” said Mike Pegram, who owns Real Quiet. “It’s already been a long year, and there’s the rest of a long year ahead of us. You’ve got to be careful about picking spots when horses of this caliber are involved.”

With or without Real Quiet, the San Diego Handicap was likely to have drawn a small field. Baffert will probably run two other horses--River Keen and Tibado--but the race will lack a big-name horse.

Real Quiet, the champion 3-year-old male in 1998, won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness and missed sweeping the Triple Crown when Victory Gallop beat him by a nose in the Belmont Stakes. This year, Real Quiet has run five races at five different tracks. After second-place finishes in the New Orleans Handicap at the Fair Grounds and the Texas Mile at Lone Star Park, he won the Pimlico Special, ran third in the Massachusetts Handicap at Suffolk Downs and won the Hollywood Gold Cup.

Overall, Real Quiet has six wins, five seconds and six thirds in 20 starts, with earnings of $3.2 million. In 1997, he broke his maiden in his seventh start at 1 1/16 miles, but since then he has won only one of four stakes starts at that distance. He’ll go into the Pacific Classic not having raced in two months.

The jockey situation for Real Quiet is unclear. Kent Desormeaux rode Real Quiet throughout the colt’s 3-year-old season, but was dumped after the race at the Fair Grounds. Gary Stevens picked up the mount for the next three races, including the win in the Pimlico Special. But Stevens went to England to ride and Jerry Bailey took over for the win in the Hollywood Gold Cup.

“I don’t know who’ll ride him,” Baffert said. “With a horse like this, there’ll be no problem getting a rider.”

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Ladies Din, who swept a division of the Oceanside Stakes, plus the La Jolla Handicap and the Del Mar Derby, last year at Del Mar, is the 5-2 morning-line favorite for today’s Eddie Read Handicap, which is the first of five Grade I races to be run at the seaside track this season.

After his blitz of Del Mar, Ladies Din won the Oak Tree Derby at Santa Anita, followed by a second, two thirds and a fourth in four starts. In his last race, Ladies Din lost by a nose to another Julio Canani trainee, Silic, in the Shoemaker Breeders’ Cup Mile at Hollywood Park.

Brave Act, fifth as the favorite in the Shoemaker, is 3-1 on the morning line. At 7-2 is Hawksley Hill, who was third--half a length behind Silic--in the Shoemaker.

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One of her owners, Jeff Siegel, spent more than three hours battling traffic from Los Angeles to get to the track, but it was worth the trip as Sweet Ludy won Saturday’s $150,000 San Clemente Handicap.

Running back to the form that produced a win in the Honeymoon Handicap at Hollywood Park on May 23, Sweet Ludy finished closer to the grandstand than the inner rail in the one-mile grass race, but was a convincing winner against nine other 3-year-old fillies.

Sweet Ludy, trained by Jenine Sahadi and ridden by Corey Nakatani, finished two lengths ahead of the Julio Canani-trained Caffe Latte, who reared behind the gate and unseated jockey Brice Blanc before the start. Canani also was third with Sweet Life, and his son, Nick, who won the race last year with Sicy D’Alsace, finished last with Markale.

Favored Sweet Ludy, an Irish-bred filly and an Italian import making her fifth U.S. start, paid $7 and ran the mile in 1:35.

Horse Racing Notes

Behrens, the consensus choice as the best horse in the country, will go for his fifth consecutive victory today, running against Victory Gallop and six other rivals in the $600,000 Whitney Handicap at Saratoga. Victory Gallop, who ran one of the best races of the year in winning the Stephen Foster Handicap at Churchill Downs on June 12, is running with an entrymate, Connecting Terms. The entry is favored at 6-5, Behrens is 7-5, and then the odds jump to 6-1 on Sir Bear, winner of the Metropolitan Handicap. Others in the field are Catienus, Social Charter, Testafly and Nite Dreamer. Gary Stevens, who has been in England since June, will return to California and become the stable rider for the Thoroughbred Corp., according to the Daily Racing Form. One of Stevens’ last rides in England will be aboard Royal Anthem, a Thoroughbred Corp. horse, in the Juddmonte International Stakes at York on Aug. 17. . . . Eddie Delahoussaye, who suffered arm and thigh bruises and a sprained shoulder when his mount, Ballaco, suffered a broken leg in Friday night’s last race, will be sidelined at least through Monday. Ballaco was euthanized. . . . Jockey Matt Garcia starts a seven-day suspension on Wednesday. The Del Mar stewards cited Garcia for unprofessional conduct during and after the running of last Monday’s fourth race. They said Garcia stuck an elbow in the face of another jockey, Martin Pedroza, then initiated a prolonged verbal tirade in Pedroza’s direction afterward. Pedroza’s horse, Andover The Money, finished second; Garcia was seventh with Order A Dance.