Call It an Age-Older Problem

The season for older horses began on a high note early, with 10 of the 14 starters from the 1999 Breeders’ Cup Classic, including the first seven finishers, in training.

Most of those horses are still around, in one way or the other, but the problem racing has faced all year is corralling enough of them to run in the same races.

Today’s Sempra Energy Hollywood Gold Cup, a $1-million race, is a case in point: General Challenge, a contender for horse of the year, is entered. After that, the nine-horse field drops off so badly that Out Of Mind, the 5-2 second choice on the morning line, is running in a Grade I race for the first time in the United States. The same can be said of four others.

Maybe Bob Baffert, the trainer of 9-5 favorite General Challenge, doesn’t want his horse to get overconfident.

“I still think it’s a nice field of horses,” he said. “These are some horses that could be very good later on. It’s a changing of the guard.”

The old guard is still around. The trouble is, Golden Missile and Lemon Drop Kid and Behrens have remained in the East. Their trainers are all pointing for the Whitney Handicap, a $750,000 race at Saratoga Aug. 6.

James Bond, who trains Behrens, is represented in the Gold Cup at Hollywood Park, but the horse is Pleasant Breeze, the barn’s second-stringer who hasn’t won a race this year.

Besides today’s $1-million purse, the Gold Cup has bonus implications in a convoluted, multilayered program run by the National Thoroughbred Racing Assn. The NTRA’s bonus inducements, introduced last year, were flawed then and, despite rethinking, remain problematical. Television-generated, via a contract with the Fox network, they have had no impact on the racing strategies of horsemen.

Golden Missile, for example, won the Pimlico Special in May and could have earned a $1-million bonus if he had added victories in the Gold Cup and the Whitney. Instead, his trainer, Joe Orseno, isn’t budging from his New York training base.

“The Whitney has been etched in stone for us for a long time,” he said. “I know there would have been the possibility of the bonus, but the Gold Cup and the Whitney are too close together for us to run in both, and we know that our horse likes the track at Saratoga.”

The NTRA series, derived from the American Championship Racing Series that worked better during its short run in the early 1990s, is a crazy quilt of 20 races that started with the Donn Handicap at Gulfstream Park on Feb. 5 and ends with the Whitney. The big bonus money is pegged toward only five races--the Donn, the Santa Anita Handicap in March, the Pimlico Special, the Gold Cup and the Whitney.

No horse will have run in all of the first four races, and, in fact, only one horse--Cat Thief--will have competed in three of the four after the Gold Cup.

There’s a raft of reasons for the lukewarm response:

* Injuries, such as the bothersome quarter cracks for Stephen Got Even, the Donn winner, can lay up horses.

* The 20 races are too many, some scheduled on the same day and several falling within a week or less of others.

* The low-end bonus money, in the scheme of things, is not enough to make a trainer ship his horse cross-country to run. For instance, after today’s race, why would Baffert send General Challenge to Saratoga for a race that might be worth only $180,000 in bonus payouts? Of course if General Challenge, the Santa Anita Handicap winner, wins again today, he would also be looking at a $1-million bonus with a win in the Whitney, but it is still likely he will stay in Southern California to run in the $1-million Pacific Classic at Del Mar on Aug. 26. John Mabee, who races General Challenge, is the board chairman of Del Mar.

* The NTRA can’t compete with Sheik Mohammed’s $6-million Dubai World Cup, the world’s richest race, which is run in the United Arab Emirates in March. The sheik pays the expenses of visiting horses, and to the dismay of U.S. tracks, most horses are knocked out from the 16,000-mile round trip and forced to skip many of the mid-season fixtures here. Six American-based horses, including Behrens, ran in the Dubai race this year, and most have only recently been able to approach their top form.

“Even if you don’t go to Dubai,” said Baffert, who won the race with Silver Charm in 1998, “it’s so hard to keep these top horses running all year long. Track surfaces are different no matter where you go, and many horses have trouble adjusting. That can take its toll in the long run.”

The NTRA, a marketing outfit that has been operating at losses in the millions during its brief existence, is a political animal beholden to members, including many of the country’s racetracks.

One purpose of the racing series was to expand television coverage, which the NTRA says it has done, but included on the bonus schedule are some Grade III races at the Fair Grounds in Louisiana, Lone Star Park in Texas and Prairie Meadows in Iowa. Those venues usually have limited appeal for blue-ribbon horses.

The Hollywood Gold Cup comes on the heels of a Belmont Stakes that had its weakest field in years. Racing is also troubled by a 3-year-old division that fell apart during the Triple Crown series. Neither Fusaichi Pegasus, the Kentucky Derby winner, nor Red Bullet, the Preakness winner, ran in the Belmont, and only one horse--Impeachment--competed in all three races.

Red Bullet and Commendable, the Belmont winner, will hook up today in the Dwyer Stakes at Belmont Park, but the race drew only two other horses. If the older-horse division is looking to beef up from the 3-year-olds, it could be a long winter.

GOLD CUP

* Race: $1-million Sempra Energy Hollywood Gold Cup.

* When: Today about 2:30 (to be run as fifth race on Hollywood Park program).

* TV: Channel 11 (coverage begins at 2 p.m.)

Gold Cup Field

The field, in post-position order, for the 61st running of the $1-million Sempra Energy Hollywood Gold Cup today. All starters carry 124 pounds.

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Horse Jockey Odds Cat Thief Pat Day 5-1 David Aaron Gryder 12-1 Pleasant Breeze Jorge Chavez 20-1 Early Pioneer Victor Espinoza 15-1 Chester House Kent Desormeaux 5-1 Big Ten Alex Solis 12-1 General Challenge Corey Nakatani 9-5 Blueprint (s) Chris McCarron 15-1 Out Of Mind (s) Eddie Delahoussaye 5-2

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(s) supplemental nomination