Latest Cella Import Finally Gets Victory

When he’s not running Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark., Charles Cella dabbles in foreign bloodstock. From Argentina, Cella imported Fanatic Boy, who became a stakes winner in the early 1990s, and a couple of years later, from France, came Northern Spur, who became a turf champion in the U.S.

Now international agent Murray Friedlander, who uncovered Northern Spur, has brought another European standout to the Santa Anita barn of Cella’s trainer, Ron McAnally, and expectations are running just as high.

Dark Moondancer probably cost about as much as Northern Spur--a reported $1.3 million--and Monday at Santa Anita the big English-bred started recouping his purchase price. Dark Moondancer, ridden by Chris McCarron, won the $200,000 San Luis Obispo Handicap by 2 1/2 lengths over The Fly, a victory worth $120,000.

The 44th San Luis Obispo, run over a soft course saturated by two days of rain, produced a 1 1/2-mile clocking of 2:39 3/5, slowest in race history.

“They started it on the [backstretch] flat instead of coming down the hill,” McAnally said. “It’s a lot tougher when you don’t have that half-mile run down the hill at the start.”

Dark Moondancer, who paid $3 as the heavy favorite in a five-horse field, was second to Astra Ridge after a mile. McCarron’s mount took the lead entering the stretch, then didn’t abandon the task after The Fly stuck his head in front with about an eighth of a mile to run.

“He was the class of the race,” McCarron said of Dark Moondancer. “It got a little exciting at the quarter pole when The Fly came to us, but only briefly. This horse can run a long way and do it in a relaxed fashion. On the [final] turn [Corey Nakatani, riding The Fly] tried to sneak up between us, and I wasn’t going to let him. So I let my horse out a notch.”

Nakatani, leading jockey at the meet, thought The Fly would be dangerous through the homestretch.

“But he started bobbling a little on the soft turf,” Nakatani said. “He was struggling. If the course had been a little faster--where my horse could quicken better--we would have had a shot. The winner seemed to like the soft going.”

Cella was at Oaklawn Park on Monday, watching on TV, as his 5-year-old won for the first time in three starts since the purchase. McAnally had won the San Luis Obispo twice before, with John Henry in 1981 and Bienvenido in 1998.

Dark Moondancer’s year-end goal is the Breeders’ Cup Turf, the race Northern Spur won for Cella and McAnally in 1995. Dark Moondancer, in his first U.S. start, ran ninth in last year’s Breeders’ Cup.

Horse Racing Notes

The next racing day at Santa Anita is Thursday. . . . Trainer Neil Drysdale said that undefeated War Chant, scratched from his last race because of an off track at Bay Meadows, will make his stakes debut in the San Rafael on March 4. . . . Trainer Wayne Lukas said that the California shipper High Yield, winner of Saturday’s Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream Park, will remain there to run in the Florida Derby on March 11. “We’re going to follow the same route that we did with Thunder Gulch,” Lukas said. In 1995, Thunder Gulch won the Fountain of Youth and the Florida Derby, then ran fourth in the Blue Grass before winning the Kentucky Derby.