Chester House, Bailey Save Day for Frankel

Just when Bobby Frankel was thinking about matching a razor blade with one of his wrists, jockey Jerry Bailey, the new king of the $1-million race riders, removed a King Kong-sized monkey from the beleaguered trainer’s back.

“Strawberries today, jam tomorrow,” Frankel intoned Saturday at Arlington International Racecourse, and while the epigram fit, it required a little editing. The jam was at the beginning, when Frankel’s favored mare, Happyanunoit, was knocked off by Snow Polina in the $500,000 Beverly D. Stakes. An hour later, the strawberries. Bailey, who had ridden Snow Polina, parlayed a daring ride into a 3 1/4-length victory for Chester House in the $2-million Arlington Million, giving Frankel victory in a race that before had been his only for the losing.

Frankel had unsuccessfully run 12 horses in previous Millions before Chester House came roaring through on the rail for the 5-year-old’s first victory since June of last year when he was based in England. Frankel had tried to make a dirt horse out of Chester House in the U.S., but returned him to grass three weeks ago when, despite a second-place finish to Ladies Din in the Eddie Read Handicap at Del Mar, his losing streak reached nine races.

Bailey had never ridden Chester House, using Saturday’s opportunity for his 22nd victory in races worth $1 million or more. The Hall of Fame jockey, who’ll be 43 on Aug. 29, had started the day tied with Pat Day for the lead in $1-million wins.

To get through along the fence, Bailey needed help from Asidero, the fading pace-setter, who came out under Alex Solis to create the small hole that was imperative for Chester House to win.

“The older you get, the smaller the holes,” said Bailey, who, like Frankel, had never won the Million. “We just loped along and then hoped. You never know until the moment of truth whether it’s going to open up, and when it does, it’s usually not for very long. You’re either a hero or a goat in that kind of situation. This is a race I’ve always wanted to win. I used to ride at Arlington several years ago, and my wife is from Illinois. I consider myself a good grass rider, but a lot of the big grass races have eluded me.”

Before a crowd of 26,664, the first five horses across the line in the seven-horse field were from California. The hard-luck Manndar was second, half a length in front of Mula Gula, who had one length on Bienamado, the 5-2 favorite. After Asidero, in fifth place, came Running Stag, who raced closest to Asidero early, and Slickly, Sheik Mohammed’s invader from France. Chester House, bred in Kentucky and owned by Saudi Arabian prince Khalid Abdullah’s Juddmonte Farms, paid $9.60 as the fourth choice.

The son of Mr. Prospector and Toussaud, the multiple stakes winner Frankel trained in the early 1990s, Chester House earned $1.2 million, running 1 1/4 miles on a drying-out, yielding course in 2:01 1/5.

Bailey, becoming the first jockey to win the Million and the Beverly D. in the same year, settled for second in the last of Saturday’s three Grade I stakes when King Cugat, the 3-5 favorite, was run down by Pine Dance, at 10-1, and lost by one length in the $400,000 Secretariat Stakes for 3-year-olds.

Chester House had lost all five of his races this year and was winless in six under Frankel. From Saratoga, Bailey watched the Eddie Read Handicap on TV and quickly called his agent, Ron Anderson, to seek out the mount. By nightfall the day of the Read, Frankel had hired Bailey.

“I needed Jerry in the Beverly D., too,” Frankel said. “I could have had him. That shows you how smart I am. They [Bailey and Anderson] begged me to ride Happyanunoit.”

While Asidero clicked off fractions of :24 1/5, :47 3/5 and 1:11 4/5 for the first six furlongs, Chester House raced in fourth place, behind the leader, Running Stag and Slickly.

“At that stage, I could have made up the ground any time I wanted to,” Bailey said.

Leaving the turn for home, Chester House squeezed through. Bailey’s good fortune was not with Manndar, who was behind a wall of horses in the stretch.

“We could have won,” Manndar’s jockey, Corey Nakatani, said to trainer Beau Greely as they walked off the track.

Greely didn’t blame Nakatani.

“I was hoping we’d get clear, but when we did, there was a lot of ground to make up,” Greely said. “We were stuck all the way around. There was nowhere to go.”

Ridden by Brice Blanc, Happyanunoit, at 3-5, nosed out Country Garden for second place in the 1 3/16-mile Beverly D. Snow Polina, owned by Gary Tanaka and trained by Bill Mott, won in 1:55 4/5, paying $11 and earning $300,000. The order of finish after the first three was Diamond White, Only To You, Alluring, Wade For Me, Elegant Ridge, America and Wild Heart Dancing.

In Frankel’s box seat, despondency set in. A Hall of Famer, Frankel is winless with 34 Breeders’ Cup starters, and now he faced another uphill battle in the Million after his best bet of the day hadn’t been good enough.

“I was thinking a lot of things,” Frankel said. “I was thinking that I can’t win the big ones. I was thinking that I can’t win anything outside California. Everybody kept telling me how tremendous a horse Chester House was, but after running him five or six times, you lose confidence. I don’t know exactly what we’ll do with him from here, but at least we got some payback and he’s won his Group I. The rest for him is all gravy.”