California, Here He Comes . . . at Last

Even the most intrepid handicappers can be excused for not recognizing the past-performance lines of Smoky Cinder, one of trainer Jenine Sahadi’s two horses in Saturday’s $250,000 Wells Fargo California Cup Classic at Santa Anita.

It’s not often, if ever, that a horse has prepped for one of the Cal Cup races by running in Canada. Smoky Cinder, who’s 7-2 on the morning line, the third choice in the 1 1/8-mile race, comes to Santa Anita by way of Assiniboia Downs in Winnipeg and Northlands Park in Edmonton.

Both of those tracks are considered bull rings, ovals with sharp turns on the order of Fairplex Park in Pomona, so Smoky Cinder will be asked to make an adjustment at Santa Anita, which at a mile is almost twice the circumference of Northlands Park.

A 5-year-old gelding, Smoky Cinder is a California-bred, as all the Cal Cup horses are, but he has never run in the state. He comes to California with 13 wins in 32 starts, $260,442 in purses and having finished in the money 17 times in 19 races the last two years.

Sahadi’s other starter in the Classic is Warm April, who was claimed from trainer Carla Gaines for $50,000 a year ago. In his first start for Sahadi, Warm April finished second to longshot Sunday Stroll in last year’s Cal Cup Juvenile. On dirt for Sahadi, Warm April has a win and three seconds in four tries.

“He’s training really well and he’s a very consistent horse,” Sahadi said. “He tries every time, and I think this is really a wide-open event, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed.”

Six of the nine favorites in the Classic have been beaten, but Sahadi hasn’t been among the victims. When Sahadi saddled Megan’s Interco in the 1996 running, the 7-year-old gelding, at 7-10 odds, became the second of three winning favorites in the series.

Del Mar Gray is the expected favorite in the 10th running. He’s 8-5 on the morning line, but the race has not been kind to even the chalkiest favorites, including Best Pal twice. Best Pal, when he was retired in 1996, had earned $5.6 million, easily the most for any Cal-bred, but twice he was toppled in the Cal Cup. He was 2-5 when Charmonnier beat him in 1991 and 4-5 when Luthier Fever defeated him four years later. In between, Best Pal won the Classic in 1993.

Budroyale, last year’s Classic winner, got a better offer this time--namely the $4-million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale, Fla., on Nov. 6. What’s left at Santa Anita is the weakest field the Cal Cup Classic has ever had. Del Mar Gray has earned $326,388, but has won only five of 20 starts. Bagshot, the second choice on the morning line, has earned almost half a million, $200,000 of it when he was second to Malek in the weird Santa Anita Handicap last year, but he hasn’t won a race since 1996.

In post-position order, with jockeys, weights and morning-line odds, this is the field for the Classic:

Warm April, Chris McCarron, 112 pounds, 5-1; Lester’s Boy, Frank Alvarado, 112, 15-1; Smoky Cinder, Gary Stevens, 116, 7-2; Prestigious Chief, Victor Espinoza, 114, 8-1; Bagshot, Chris Antley, 116, 3-1; Splendid Splinter, Kent Desormeaux, 113, 12-1; and Del Mar Gray, Alex Solis, 118, 8-5.

Horse Racing Notes

Trainer Rafael Becerra, who will saddle Lester’s Boy in the California Cup Classic, will soon be joining the Thoroughbred Corp. as an assistant trainer. Becerra has had difficulty getting horses since he left trainer Gary Jones to form his own stable in 1993. . . . Laffit Pincay is a grandfather. Pincay’s daughter, Lisa Bernstein, delivered a girl Thursday. Winless with his only mount at Santa Anita on Thursday, Pincay, 52, needs 31 wins to break Bill Shoemaker’s record. Shoemaker rode 8,833 winners. . . . Pleasant Temper, who had also been pre-entered in the Breeders’ Cup Mile, will run in the new race, the Filly and Mare Turf Stakes, trainer Elliott Walden said.