LICENSE TO TRAIN

His name is Bond, James Bond.

Wherever his horses train, you’ll find “007” signs identifying the barns.

Other than that, H. James Bond is a low-profile trainer. Part of the year, his horses are stabled at Saratoga in upstate New York. Bond even keeps the horses there when the midsummer Saratoga meet isn’t running, vanning them the 180 miles for races at the tracks in metropolitan New York. At Saratoga, Bond’s barns are on the outskirts of the “Oklahoma” section of the backstretch, so far from the hubbub that they seem about halfway to Albany, about a $10 cab ride from the paddock.

The rest of the year, during the winter months, Bond’s horses train at Payson Park, a large training center in Indiantown, Fla., which is 90 miles north of Gulfstream Park. Bond isn’t the only trainer enamored of bucolic Payson. Other horsemen stabled there include Bill Mott, Elliott Walden and Christophe Clement.

While most of the horses for today’s Breeders’ Cup at Gulfstream have been on the grounds for close to a week, Bond will van his Breeders’ Cup contenders--Behrens in the $4-million Classic and Val’s Prince in the $2-million Turf--to Gulfstream late this morning.

“It works for me, and it works for my horses,” Bond said this week at his barn office at Payson Park. “I didn’t consider changing the routine just because this is the Breeders’ Cup. Behrens is really very comfortable up here. He’s comfortable when he’s at Saratoga. But when he goes on the road, he can go off his feed for a day, and I didn’t want to take a chance on that going into this race. If Behrens were a person, you’d say that he’s somebody who doesn’t like strange hotel rooms.”

Behrens, the 3-1 morning-line favorite for the 14-horse Classic, has won only two of six starts at Gulfstream, but the bad races over the Breeders’ Cup racing strip are well in his past. Last winter here, he ran three strong races winning the Gulfstream Park Handicap and finishing second in the Broward and Donn Handicap.

Behrens has four wins and four seconds in eight starts this year, with $1.7 million in purses, and if he wins the Classic he’ll be a cinch for horse-of-the-year honors. The 16th running of the 1 1/4-mile race can’t match last year’s field at Churchill Downs, where Awesome Again beat one of the strongest stakes fields ever assembled, but today’s group is chock-full of contenders, including River Keen, who won the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park a month ago as Behrens finished second, beaten by 3 1/4 lengths on a sloppy track.

“That was the only hiccup in the plan we laid out early in the year,” Bond said. “We would have preferred a dry track. But when I got back to the barn after the race, the horse made me feel a lot better. He was bouncing around like he thought he won. He changed my attitude. I started acting like I thought he won too.”

The track is expected to be fast today, for a 10-race card that concludes with the eight Breeders’ Cup races, worth $13 million. The only rain in the forecast is a “passing shower,” with temperatures expected to reach the low 80s.

“I just wish we didn’t have 14 horses running,” Bond said. “I wish the entry rules were more stringent about the quality and class of the horses that can run. Some of them in there, it will be a miracle if they’d win. This is a championship race, and you’d hate to get beat by a horse stopping right in front of you.”

Behrens’ jockey, Jorge Chavez, is a 37-year-old Peruvian who might be 4 feet 10 if he stands on his tiptoes. Eighteen of the 126 pounds that Behrens carries will come from the leadpads under Chavez’s saddle. Chavez has been the leading rider in New York for the last five years, having emigrated after he took a vacation to Florida in 1988 and never left the U.S. Chavez is No. 3 in the country in purses this year, behind Jerry Bailey and Pat Day with almost $14 million, but in the Breeders’ Cup he is winless with 19 mounts, his best finish a second with L’Carriere, a 51-1 shot who chased Cigar home at Belmont Park in the 1995 Classic.

L’Carriere raced for Bond and was owned by Virginia Kraft Payson, the owner of Payson Park. Chavez rides most of Bond’s horses. “I don’t know this for sure,” Bond said, “but I think Jorge was responsible for me getting Val’s Prince. When the owner [Steve Weiner] wanted to make a trainer change at Saratoga, Jorge had been riding the horse, and I’m almost certain he sent him in my direction.”

Other horses running in the Classic with horse-of-the-year aspirations are River Keen and his Bob Baffert-trained stablemate, General Challenge; Lemon Drop Kid and Almutawakel.

Yes, Almutawakel. He has won only one race this year, but it was the richest race in the world, the $5-million Dubai World Cup. A win in the second-richest race would make Almutawakel hard to ignore at the ballot box. Since Bailey, a four-time winner of the Classic, started riding Sheik Mohammed’s colt, he has taken to dirt with ease, getting nosed out by River Keen in the Woodward and running third, behind River Keen and Behrens, in the Jockey Club Gold Cup.

Almutawakel is 6-1 on the Classic’s morning line. “We resisted the temptation to run at Royal Ascot and in other champion races in Europe,” said Simon Crisford, the racing manager for Sheik Mohammed’s Godolphin Stable. “We wanted to have the horse here at 100%. That’s been the goal since the Dubai World Cup.”

Yes, Lemon Drop Kid. He might have been ninth in the Kentucky Derby, but after that he won the Belmont, spoiling Charismatic’s Triple Crown, and also won the Travers. He does his best running on dry tracks and is 8-1 today.

“He’s better, no, he’s as good as any horse on the grounds,” trainer Scotty Schulhofer said. “If he wins the Classic, he should be horse of the year.”

River Keen is 6-1. He was claimed for $100,000 less than a year ago, and then won only one of eight starts before the two wins in New York. For Eclipse Awards voters, it’s usually a matter of what-have-you-done-for-us-lately, and a win by River Keen today would fit that mold in a year in which no horse has dominated.

Since the claim, Baffert has not seen River Keen run. He has been out of town with other horses all three days.

“Bob,” owner Hugo Reynolds said to Baffert after the Jockey Club Gold Cup, “I’ve got two big [winner’s circle] pictures hanging in my house without you in them. I think it’s time that we changed that.”

General Challenge is 4-1. Eleventh in the Kentucky Derby, he won the Santa Anita Derby before that and has been solid since Churchill Downs, winning the Pacific Classic at Del Mar and not running worse than second. A 3-year-old hasn’t been voted horse of the year since Holy Bull in 1994, but General Challenge or Lemon Drop Kid could break through with a Classic win.

Win or lose today, it has been a startling rise for Bond, who as recently as the mid-1990s was still running horses at Finger Lakes, the leaky-roof track near Rochester, N.Y. Red Smith, the late Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, once said that horses at Finger Lakes ran in times that were “excellent for a mule and phenomenal for a fat man.”

Bond grew up in the Finger Lakes area, and when he was 16 his father, who also had a racing stable, said he could have either a car or a $1,500 plug from the claiming ranks. Bond figured the horse would win enough to pay for a car. He was wrong, and a few years later, badly stiffed by one of his clients and out of money, he went to work in a screw factory to pay the bills. If he has the screws turned just right on Behrens, Bond will get a horse-of-the-year trophy for his persistence.

Horse Racing Notes

Late Friday, Gulfstream Park and Breeders’ Cup officials were not clear about the ownership of Val’s Prince or the colors the 7-year-old gelding would run in for the $2-million Turf. “We’re still waiting to see court papers,” a Breeders’ Cup spokesman said. A Florida judge, addressing a suit challenging the ownership of the horse, put Val’s Prince into receivership Thursday. Named as receiver was Jimmy Picou, the horse’s former trainer, who couldn’t be reached Friday. It appears that James Bond will saddle the horse today. “The Gulfstream stewards have taken the position that since Bond entered the horse [on Wednesday], he should also run him,” a Breeders’ Cup spokeswoman said. An attorney for Steve Weiner, who has been racing Val’s Prince in a strained partnership with Robin Martin after buying him in 1995, said that their appeal of the judge’s receivership decision wouldn’t be filed until next week.

Trainer Wayne Lukas, who has won a record 13 Breeders’ Cup races, said that his seven horses will be running today with nasal strips that may open air passages and help horses breathe. The strips, similar to those used by human athletes, among them jockeys, are not yet approved for horses in California and New York, but may be used in other states. Trainer Bob Baffert has experimented with the strips on some of his horses during morning exercises, but is not expected to use them. “I don’t think they help their breathing,” Baffert said, “but they do lessen the noise horses make [from exercising].”

Rock And Roll and Five Star Day, horses that were unable to draw into Breeders’ Cup races, won stakes Friday as Gulfstream opened its three-day Breeders’ Cup meet. Rock And Roll, who races for Madeleine Paulson and Jenny Craig, won the $75,000 A.P. Indy, and Five Star Day, ridden by Gary Stevens, won the $100,000 Thirty Slews. . . . Winners of other $100,000 races at Gulfstream were Outrigger and Extended Applause, who paid $50.80 after running six furlongs on a fast track in 1:09. The $250,000 Fraise Stakes went to trainer Bobby Frankel’s Bouccaneer, who had finished second last month to Silic in the Oak Tree Mile at Santa Anita. Victor Espinoza rode the 4-year-old colt, whose time was 1:50 3/5 for 1 1/8 miles over a drying-out turf course listed as good. Shamrock City finished second and Sharp Appeal was third. . . . Jerry Bailey, who rode Rock And Roll, also won the $200,000 Prized Stakes with King Cugat. Bill Mott trains both of Bailey’s winners.

Laffit Pincay rode the winners of the final two races of Santa Anita’s Oak Tree meeting Friday to move him within 27 victories of Bill Shoemaker’s career record. Pincay, 52, guided Rayelle to a one-length victory over Delivery in the $56,000 feature race, and then rode favored Erhard to victory in the day’s final race, giving him 8,806 victories in his career. Rayelle, who carried 117 pounds, covered one mile on turf in 1:35 3-5 and paid $9.20, $5 and $2.60. The victory was the fourth in 10 lifetime starts for Rayelle, and was worth $33,600, increasing the career earnings of the 3-year-old Kentucky-bred daughter of Relaunch to $148,120. Delivery, ridden by Emile Ramsammy and carrying 118 pounds, crossed the finish line 1 1/4 lengths in front of Royal Terminal and returned $6 and $2.80.

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The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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