Survival of Fittest a Fitting Theme

Shug McGaughey leaned on a wooden railing in the trainers’ backstretch viewing stand recently one morning at Gulfstream Park and talked about some of the horses that will be AWOL Saturday when the 16th Breeders’ Cup is run.

Some were his own, many more were top horses that belonged to other trainers. It has been a tough year for high-profile horses, and the attrition rate will be reflected at Gulfstream, where eight Breeders’ Cup races--one more than ever before--will be run for $13 million in purses.

“This is the hardest year I’ve had since I started training,” said McGaughey, who saddled his first horse 20 years ago. “There have been others that I’ve lost, but the biggest hits were Oh What A Windfall and Treasure Island.”

In late June, Oh What A Windfall ran second in the Mother Goose Stakes, one of Belmont Park’s major races for 3-year-old fillies, but suffered a chipped ankle and was retired. Treasure Island, one of McGaughey’s best 3-year-old colts, had finished third in the Withers and was preparing for the Dwyer Stakes when he sustained a career-ending leg injury.

By any standard, McGaughey has been at the forefront of the Breeders’ Cup since the year-end extravaganza began at Hollywood Park in 1984. He has started 42 horses, second to Wayne Lukas’ 120. He has won seven races, second to Lukas’ 13 victories, and his horses have earned $6.6 million, third behind Lukas’ $12.9 million and Bill Mott’s $7.8 million. McGaughey is the private trainer for the Ogden Phipps family, which breeds horses with blue-ribbon pedigrees and has owned five of McGaughey’s seven winners. But Saturday the trainer will have only one starter--Finder’s Fee in the $1-million Juvenile Fillies.

McGaughey’s horses have won 45 races and earned $2.8 million in purses, but he’s 19th on the national money list and even a win by Finder’s Fee won’t salvage a sub-par season.

“It’s tough when you lose good horses like I’ve lost,” McGaughey said. “Then at the main meet at Belmont Park, we had 19 horses that finished second. But I’m not the only guy.”

Indeed, Oh What A Windfall is more fortunate than Three Ring, because at least the Phippses will be able to breed their filly to a band of premier stallions. Three Ring, a filly good enough to merit a start against the boys in the Kentucky Derby, fractured her skull and died in a prerace paddock accident at Belmont about three months later.

Four horses that ran in the Derby--Cat Thief, Lemon Drop Kid, General Challenge and Ecton Park--will be running in Saturday’s $4-million Breeders’ Cup Classic. Compared to some years, that’s an above-average turnout, but this May the crop of 3-year-olds seemed formidable.

Then one by one, they began to vanish: Charismatic, winner of the Derby and Preakness, not only failed to sweep the Triple Crown, but his career also ended when he broke an ankle in the Belmont Stakes; Menifee, second in the Derby, won the Travers at Saratoga in August, but suffered from stiff hind quarters after that and is through for the year; Excellent Meeting, a filly who ran fifth in the Derby and the horse that beat Oh What A Windfall in the Mother Goose, underwent ankle surgery and has been given the rest of the year off.

Older horses have not been exempt. Trainer Elliott Walden, like McGaughey, has been double-whammied, losing both Menifee and Victory Gallop, who ran one of the toughest races of the year, holding off Behrens in the Whitney Handicap at Saratoga. But Victory Gallop came out of the race with career-ending leg injury. Other trainers who have absorbed multiple losses include Bob Baffert, who no longer has Excellent Meeting, Silver Charm and Real Quiet available; and Richard Mandella, whose losses include Event Of The Year, Puerto Madero and Malek. Baffert’s stable is so deep that he’s still running eight horses at Gulfstream on Saturday, but a trainer such as Paco Gonzalez had no backup star when Free House, who earned more than $3 million, was retired because of a torn ligament.

Some former horsemen, such as Hall of Fame trainer Johnny Nerud, feel that trainers consistently work their horses too fast in the mornings, but McGaughey cannot put his finger on any suspect training patterns that might be responsible for the rash of injuries. In the case of Treasure Island, a late-developing colt, McGaughey did the right thing by withholding him from the Triple Crown races. But he was still injured.

The Breeders’ Cup itself, run annually in late October or early November, has kept horses in training longer each year. There’s also pressure on trainers to crank up their horses early in the year, now that Sheik Mohammed has made the Dubai World Cup in March an international fixture. Next year’s Dubai race will be worth $5 million, $1 million more than Saturday’s richest Breeders’ Cup race. Silver Charm, winner of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness in 1997, ran in Dubai twice, winning in 1998, but the trips to the Persian Gulf took their toll. When he was retired in June, Silver Charm had won only four of his last 11 starts and had been beaten by more than 22 lengths in his last two races.

“We race these horses from the time they’re 2-year-olds until they’re four or five years old,” said Wayne Lukas, who trained Charismatic. “We put incredible demands on them, and at some point they’re going to show the effects of that.”

Lukas has been widely accused of over-racing his stock, but Charismatic’s Belmont, the colt’s fourth demanding race in two months, could hardly have been avoided. After an uninspiring fourth-place finish in the Santa Anita Derby, Lukas was obligated to run Charismatic at Keeneland, two weeks later and only two weeks before the Kentucky Derby, to see if his Whilom claimer was Derby caliber. Then there was no turning back after the victories in the Derby and the Preakness.

A few days before the Belmont, however, Elliott Walden, who was running Menifee in the race, speculated that Lukas might be pushing the envelope too far.

“This horse is going to hit the wall one of these days,” Walden said. “I’m hoping that it might be [Belmont day].”

Trouble was, Menifee might also have been wrung out from the rigors of the Triple Crown and appeared to be going in the wrong direction. After his second in the Derby and an eighth-place finish in the Preakness, he was a badly beaten eighth in the Belmont.

With many owners bullish about running their horses, fewer trainers have the luxury of being able to map out a campaign early in the year and then following it. An exception this year has been James Bond, the trainer of probable Breeders’ Cup Classic favorite Behrens. In Florida last winter, after Bond saddled his horse for a second--to Puerto Madero--in the Donn Handicap and a win in the Gulfstream Park Handicap, he planned only five more races before the Breeders’ Cup. Behrens won the Oaklawn and Massachusetts Handicaps, captured the Suburban and was second in the Whitney and Jockey Club Gold Cup.

Along the way, there were temptations--and blandishments from tracks--to run in the Hollywood Gold Cup, the Pacific Classic at Del Mar and the Woodward, but Bond resisted. Now, win or lose, he can tell himself that he has brought Behrens to the Breeders’ Cup the right way.

Horse Racing Notes

Trainer Bill Mott said Sunday that Gary Stevens will ride Vision And Verse in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Stevens, who has won six Breeders’ Cup races, is winless in 10 tries in the Classic. He has been second three times, including Silver Charm’s runner-up finish behind Awesome Again last year. Stevens will be riding Vision And Verse for the first time. Shane Sellers rode the colt when he was second in the Belmont and the Travers. . . . Mott has won five Breeders’ Cup races, including Cigar’s victory in the 1995 Classic. His other hopefuls Saturday are Garbu in the Mile and Royal Anthem in the Turf. Royal Anthem, who is owned by Prince Ahmed Salman’s Thoroughbred Corp., has been in the care of English trainer Henry Cecil. The colt was in North America last year, winning the Canadian International at Woodbine and finishing eighth as the favorite in the Breeders’ Cup Turf at Churchill Downs. Garbu, who races for Allen Paulson, the owner of Cigar, hasn’t won since taking a Grade III stake at Gulfstream in March.

Breeders’ Cup

Gulfstream Park

Saturday, 10 a.m.

Channel 4