Riboletta Has Shot at a Sweep

As an assistant to trainer Ron McAnally, Eduardo Inda was closely associated with Bayakoa and Brought To Mind, two of the three distaffers that have been able to sweep Hollywood Park’s three dirt stakes for older fillies and mares.

Now Inda is looking for the same sweep with a mare of his own, and McAnally will also have a horse in the race, trying to stop him.

The plot unfolds Sunday, with the 59th edition of the Vanity Handicap. Inda, who left McAnally to form his own stable in 1995, will saddle the high-weighted favorite, Riboletta, while McAnally sends out Bordelaise, who has finished second to Riboletta twice this year, the last time in the Milady on May 28.

For McAnally, Bayakoa swept the Hawthorne, the Milady and the Vanity in 1989, and Brought To Mind also won the three races in 1991. Before that, the only horse to pull off the triple was Cascapedia in 1977.

Seven are entered in the 1 1/8-mile race, and it won’t be a two-horse battle if Excellent Meeting can somehow return to her 1999 form. Excellent Meeting won four stakes last year, and even ran a respectable fifth against colts in the Kentucky Derby, but she’s winless this year and has finished a combined 11 3/4 lengths behind Riboletta in her two starts.

Chris McCarron, who won the Vanity last year with Manistique--his fourth win in the stake--will ride Riboletta, who’ll carry 123 pounds, three more than Excellent Meeting and seven more than Bordelaise, who has won one of five starts since arriving from Argentina late last year. This is the field, in post-position order: Feverish, Speaking Of Time, Bordelaise, Riboletta, Excellent Meeting, Cookin Vickie and Gleefully.

Another stake on Sunday’s card is the Jim Murray Memorial Handicap, named for the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist of The Times, who died in 1998. Corey Nakatani, who has won the last two runnings of the Jim Murray, with Cote D’azur and Lazy Lode, will take another shot Sunday with Yaralino. Bienamado, the high weight at 121 pounds, drew the No. 7 post in an eight-horse field.

Horse Racing Notes

The Manhattan Handicap, run the same day in New York as the Belmont Stakes, might have been the breakout race for Manndar, but it was a career-ending start for two others in the field. High-Rise, the 1998 Epsom Derby winner, broke his right front ankle in the Manhattan and has been retired. Yagli, who finished fourth before being disqualified to sixth, also won’t run again. Suffering from a respiratory problem, Yagli hasn’t won since last year and is not the horse he was in 1998, when he finished second to Buck’s Boy in the Breeders’ Cup Turf. High-Rise earned $1.8 million, Yagli $1.7 million. Manndar is headed for this year’s Breeders’ Cup Turf, at Churchill Downs on Nov. 4, but along the way he’ll probably run in the Eddie Read at Del Mar on July 30 and the Arlington Million on Aug. 19.

K One King, who has finished far back in the Pimlico Special and the Stephen Foster Stakes since winning the Oaklawn Handicap, will be shipping in from Churchill Downs to run in the $1-million Sempra Energy Hollywood Gold Cup on July 9. Other probables for this year’s race are General Challenge, Cat Thief, Big Ten, Chester House, David, Early Pioneer and Out Of Mind. Cat Thief, who has lost seven in a row since winning the Breeders’ Cup Classic, will be reunited with Pat Day. In the Foster, Day opted to ride Ecton Park, who was second to Golden Missile, while Cat Thief finished third with Shane Sellers.

Robby Albarado, a leading rider in the Midwest, is going to give California a try. Albarado, 26, will ride the last week of the Hollywood Park meet, setting himself up for the opening of Del Mar on July 26.