Lukas, Baze and A.P. Indy Head Hall of Fame Ballot

Trainer Wayne Lukas, jockey Russell Baze, 1992 horse of the year A.P. Indy and three exceptional fillies are on this year’s Racing Hall of Fame ballot.

Results of voting by 130 turf writers, broadcasters and racing historians in five categories will be announced in Louisville the last week of April, a few days before the Kentucky Derby.

The two other trainers on the ballot--Richard Mandella and Neil Drysdale--are also California based. All three made the ballot in the first year of eligibility. According to Hall of Fame rules, a trainer must have been active for at least 25 years to qualify.

Lukas, who has won 13 Breeders’ Cup races, 10 Triple Crown races and been the national money leader for 14 of the last 16 years, didn’t begin training thoroughbreds full time until 1978, but he has been credited for years when he trained some thoroughbreds while concentrating on quarter horses.

Baze, a Northern California fixture at Bay Meadows and Golden Gate Fields, registered his 6,500th victory in a Bay Meadows race Thursday and has won at least 400 races a year for the last seven years.

He is joined on the ballot by Earlie Fires, who has won more than 6,000 races, and Jack Westrope, who was killed in a spill at Hollywood Park in 1958. Westrope won 2,467 races, which puts him far down on the victory list, but he rode in an era when jockeys didn’t have as many opportunities to ride as they do now. At the time of his death, Westrope was 40 and ranked eighth in total wins.

A.P. Indy, who was trained by Drysdale, is pitted against Exceller and Precisionist in the contemporary-male category. Exceller, who has been on the ballot several times, won the 1978 Jockey Club Gold Cup for trainer Charlie Whittingham at Belmont Park, beating two Triple Crown champions, Seattle Slew and Affirmed.

Precisionist, who won races all five years he raced, finished with 20 wins and earnings of $3.4 million. Under trainer Ross Fenstermaker, he earned an Eclipse Award in 1985 after winning the Breeders’ Cup Sprint off a 17-week layoff, but he was more than a sprinter, winning the Strub, the Woodward and other major stakes.

In the contemporary-female category, voters must choose among Miesque, Dance Smartly and Winning Colors.

The French filly Miesque raced in the U.S. only twice, winning the Breeders’ Cup Mile against males in 1987 and 1988. After winning the Santa Anita Derby in 1988, the Lukas-trained Winning Colors beat colts again, becoming the third and most recent filly to win the Kentucky Derby. Dance Smartly, the only filly to sweep Canada’s Triple Crown, in 1991, also won the Breeders’ Cup Distaff that year and retired with purses of $3.2 million.

The candidates for horse of yesteryear are Bald Eagle, Bowl Of Flowers and Gun Bow.