Off Scrapheap, They Now Share a Claim to Fame

Despite Charismatic’s win in this year’s Kentucky Derby, Stymie is still the king of the claimers.

Claimed from trainer Max Hirsch and King Ranch for $1,500 by trainer Hirsch Jacobs in 1943, Stymie won 25 stakes races and one national handicap title. When he was retired in 1949, Stymie had earned what was then a record $918,485.

King Ranch didn’t accept the loss of Stymie gracefully. For years afterward, visitors to the sprawling Texas spread would be warned: Ask any questions you want, but don’t mention Stymie.

Charismatic might have won the Derby, but he only ran for a claiming price--twice for $62,500--and no rival trainer actually bought him out of a race. Still, Charismatic is a possible precursor of what might happen Saturday at Gulfstream Park. Eight Breeders’ Cup races will be run--total purses, $13 million--and several, one of them the $4-million Classic, could be won by horses that were once so lightly regarded that their trainers risked losing them in claiming races.

Budroyale, a 6-year-old gelding running in the Classic, is certainly the poster boy for claimers everywhere. Fifteen times his various trainers made Budroyale vulnerable to a claim, at prices ranging from $32,000 to $80,000, and three times he was picked off, most recently for $50,000 by trainer Ted West at Santa Anita in February of 1998. West’s son, Ted H. West, will saddle Budroyale for the Breeders’ Cup. He will be a longshot, but he goes into the race off an upset of General Challenge, one of the Classic favorites, at Santa Anita on Oct. 16.

“This is a tough horse,” said Bob Baffert, General Challenge’s trainer, who suggested several days ago, in backstretch banter with Ted West, that Budroyale was tough enough to run in last Saturday’s California Cup at Santa Anita and this Saturday at Gulfstream.

Baffert’s respect for escapees from the claiming ranks comes naturally. Besides General Challenge, another of his threats in the race is River Keen, who has gone from an $80,000 claimer at Hollywood Park to a major stakes winner twice at Belmont Park this fall. In his last two starts, the 7-year-old River Keen has beaten several of the Breeders’ Cup big shots in the Woodward and Jockey Club Gold Cup Stakes.

The day Baffert claimed River Keen from trainer Bob Hess Jr. at Hollywood Park--Dec. 4, 1998--it was more through the urging of horse owner Hugo Reynolds than the trainer’s own convictions.

“Hugo and I had had several horses over the years, but none of them did anything,” Baffert said. “At one time, the best horse Hugo ever had was a horse who was running in $32,000 maiden claiming races. But he kept telling me how much he liked this horse, so I signed the [claim] slip. We thought this was a horse that would nibble around and maybe win a Grade II or a Grade III stake here and there. Two or three months ago, I would never have said that I might be going to the Breeders’ Cup with this horse.”

Reynolds, 60, owns a freeway landscaping company in Norco. River Keen, an Irish-bred whose career started in England, won the Californian at Hollywood Park in his U.S. debut in June of 1997, but chronic foot problems took over and Hess ran him for an $80,000 tag a year later. There were no takers, but two races later, one a last-place finish in the Bel Air Handicap at Hollywood, Baffert stepped up and bought him.

“I had followed him, and I liked the horse,” Reynolds said. “It was my decision to claim him. I had been looking around for horses like this. They’re hard to find. At first everybody said I made a good claim, but then after we ran him a few times, it wasn’t looking that good. He had some [hoof] problems, but now he’s come around.”

River Keen won for Hess the day he was claimed, and early this year Baffert ran him twice at Santa Anita for $100,000 and once at Hollywood Park for $80,000.

“When I ran him for a tag that day, I didn’t think any trainer in the country would claim him,” Hess said. “I was right, but an owner claimed him. Why did I run him for $100,000? For the same reason Baffert [later] ran him for $100,000. The real question is why I didn’t claim him back when I had the chance.

“The horse had quarter cracks from the very beginning, when we bought him in England for just over $100,000. He doesn’t like hard tracks, especially a track like Santa Anita. When I lost him, he was a month short of being a 7-year-old, and I just took a shot. I was being aggressive. When we had him, we still made a huge profit off him.”

Reynolds’ claim of River Keen was an early Christmas present for his wife Patsy, who was in New York for the horse’s recent wins, watching from her wheelchair. In 1998, Patsy Reynolds lost a leg after complications from a blood clot following heart surgery.

“This horse has rejuvenated us,” Hugo Reynolds said. “My wife needed this and I needed this.”

Before Ted West’s claim of Budroyale for $50,000, the California-bred had been claimed by Nick Canani from Mike Puhich for $40,000. The first time Budroyale ever ran, in December of 1995 at Hollywood Park, trainer Jay Robbins lost him to Dan Hendricks on a $32,000 claim. During Budroyale’s 43-race career, which has yielded 17 wins and $1.6 million in purses, he was also sold once privately for $120,000.

For the Wests and owner Jeffrey Sengara, Budroyale has won eight of 18 starts, with five seconds and one third, and earned about $1.3 million.

“We always like to look for horses with speed and class, and this horse had both of those things,” Ted West said. “He never seemed to like the turf, and he was coming off a bad turf race. We threw that out and thought that this was a horse we could make some money with. But of course we had no idea he’d do this much.”

Other Breeders’ Cup horses that spent time in the claiming ranks include Catienus, who will run in the Classic after being claimed in April for $50,000; Val’s Prince, one of the favorites in the $2-million Turf; Big Jag and Lexicon, California shippers that have a legitimate shot in the $1-million Sprint, and Kiss A Native, who’s running in the $1-million Juvenile.

Big Jag, a 6-year-old California-bred gelding, could have been plucked out of a race at Del Mar for $40,000 in August of 1998. He won that race, and since graduating to stakes company under trainer Timothy Pinfield, he has had eight victories and one second in 11 tries.

Wayne Lukas, who trained Charismatic, dodged the claiming bullet twice with the colt before he went on to win the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness. Charismatic’s career ended because of an injury in the Belmont Stakes.

“When it comes to horses, nobody’s infallible or completely accurate,” Lukas said. “We put Charismatic in those claiming races because that’s where we thought he’d have to go to be competitive, and of course we were dead wrong. It’s not the first time an athlete--either equine or human--did a big turnaround. We trainers are constantly trying to improve the horses we get. Sometimes they just respond, that’s all.”

Horse Racing Notes

Val’s Prince’s status for the 1 1/2-mile Turf is up in the air because of a three-sided battle for ownership rights. A court hearing is scheduled today in Ocala, Fla. . . . Instead of having three Breeders’ Cup starters, trainer Neil Drysdale is down to one. Drysdale, who has won seven Breeders’ Cup races, scratched Fiji from the 1 3/8-mile Filly and Mare Turf last week, and now Single Empire, who had been tabbed for the 1 1/2-mile Turf, is out because of an abscessed foot. Winless since the San Juan Capistrano Handicap at Santa Anita in April, Single Empire will miss four or five days of training and is a possibility for the Hollywood Turf Cup on Dec. 4. Drysdale’s lone Breeders’ Cup survivor is Hawksley Hill, who will try to win the Mile after finishing second in the stake last year.

With Single Empire out and Supreme Sound expected to run in the Classic instead of the Turf, Courteous and Borgia will move up on the also-eligible list to run in the Turf. . . . Postponed and Bach will join the field for the Juvenile with the announcement that Brahms and Mull Of Kintyre won’t run. . . . River Keen (Classic), after working six furlongs Monday at Belmont Park, was flown to Florida on Tuesday.

At Gulfstream, trainer Bob Baffert’s horses continue to work fast. Silverbulletday (Distaff) completed five furlongs in 57 2/5 seconds and General Challenge (Classic) went six furlongs in 1:09 3/5. . . . More rain fell Tuesday, and although today and Thursday are expected to be dry, rain is forecast for Friday. The combination of the rain from Hurricane Irene and recent showers guarantees that the three Breeders’ Cup races on grass Saturday will be run in soft going. The grass course was closed Tuesday and there has been little training time at Gulfstream for turf horses. The rain, however, has cut into the heat, and a cooling trend has arrived, with high temperatures expected to be in the 70s the next two days. Soft turf and moderate temperatures figure to help many of the European contenders.

Gulfstream’s three-day Breeders’ Cup meet begins Friday, and it’s possible that the two grass races on the opening card will be moved to the dirt to protect the turf course. There’s virtually no chance that the Breeders’ Cup grass races will be switched to the main track. That has never happened, and there would be wholesale scratches if it did. . . . Da Hoss, winner of the Breeders’ Cup Mile in 1996 and 1998, has been retired.