Mandella Wants to Get a Better Break on Track

Although one of them hasn’t raced in six months and the other hasn’t won a race in more than a year, both of Richard Mandella’s challengers in today’s $1-million Santa Anita Handicap are in better fettle than their walking-on-eggs trainer.

Mandella, who has won two of the last three Big ‘Caps, will send out Malek, his 1998 winner, and Puerto Madero, who was fifth in the race last year, only a month after he broke his back in a jet-skiing accident in Barbados. Malek has a chronic bad back, which has limited him to nine races in two years, but he’s moving much better than Mandella, who is wearing an upper-body brace that makes him look a little like one of those telephone technicians before they climb their poles.

“And here I thought you couldn’t get hurt on one of those things,” said Mandella, who got hooked on jet-skiing in the United Arab Emirates, where he has finished second in three of the four runnings of the Dubai World Cup, most recently with Malek last year.

Mandella broke the 12th vertebra on his spinal column, the distorted bone coming perilously close to cutting his spinal cord.

“It was scary,” Mandella said. “I was in a dead heat for a wheelchair. I was very lucky.”

Mandella, 49, will be wearing the brace for two more months.

“They tell me it should heal fine,” said Mandella, known for his flights of humor in the face of defeat.

This week at Santa Anita, Mandella was saying: “At least I should come out of this with better posture than when I went in.”

Barbados was supposed to be a couple of days of rest and relaxation, after several days of hard work in South America, where Mandella was helping with the newly acquired thoroughbred holdings of R.D. Hubbard, the former chairman of Hollywood Park and co-owner of Puerto Madero.

“We looked at 270 horses in Brazil and Argentina,” Mandella said, “then we stopped in Barbados on the way back. Hubbard’s group went out to play golf, and I decided on the jet skis. The seats are well-padded, and you’re strapped in. What could happen?”

After the first two waves, Mandella took off from the biggest wave he’d ever seen.

“I couldn’t believe the size of that sucker,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d ever come down. It was like falling off a building.”

Mandella landed so hard on the seat of the jet ski that his disks were compressed.

With Mandella’s activity at the barn restricted, Ben Craft has been in charge of the operation. Their Big ‘Cap horses have danced some of racing’s biggest dances--Puerto Madero beat Behrens and Silver Charm to win the Donn Handicap at Gulfstream Park early last year, and Malek has been beaten by about three lengths in two Dubai World Cups--but based on current form, they are longshots.

In the eight-horse field, the runaway Strub winner General Challenge is 9-5 on the morning line, with Budroyale 5-2 and Cat Thief 7-2. Malek, who hasn’t run since his fifth-place finish in the Pacific Classic at Del Mar on Aug. 29, is 8-1, and Puerto Madero, last in the San Pasqual Handicap in his only start this year, is 15-1.

“They’re nice horses, and this is the Santa Anita Handicap, so they deserve to be in there,” Mandella said of his pair. “I wouldn’t have them in there if I didn’t think they had some kind of a chance.”

Malek won the Big ‘Cap in the most bizarre running in the 62-year history of the stake. Only five horses were entered, and Bagshot and Don’t Blame Rio were perceived as being along for the ride. Malek, a Chilean-bred, had run well in his only two U.S. starts, but the race was billed as an epic showdown between Silver Charm, the 1997 Kentucky Derby winner who had won the San Fernando, the Strub and the Dubai World Cup to start 1998, and Mandella’s other horse, Gentlemen, who followed his $2.1-million 1997 with a six-length win in the San Antonio Handicap.

Silver Charm was scratched on the eve of the race because of a bruised foot, and Gentlemen, at 1-20 the biggest favorite ever for a Big ‘Cap, bled badly from the lungs and finished last. In the winner’s circle, Mandella didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as he accepted congratulations for Malek. In 1997, the trainer had finished an unprecedented 1-2-3 with Siphon, Sandpit and Gentlemen, so Malek’s win gave him the first back-to-back training triumphs since Charlie Whittingham with Lord At War and Greinton in 1985-86.

Horse Racing Notes

Chris Antley, winning for the third time since his return to riding last Sunday, rode Squall City to a 1 1/2-length win over favored Classic Olympio in Friday’s $109,650 La Habra Stakes. Antley, who started an extended vacation in early November and then underwent knee surgery this year, won one other race on Friday’s card. . . . Six Below, who was to run an as entrymate with Bagshot in the Santa Anita Handicap, broke his leg in a workout last weekend and has been retired. The 5-year-old ran only three times, winning at Hollywood Park by 13 lengths in December. “He had as much talent as any horse we’ve ever had,” co-owner John Toffan said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Santa Anita Handicap

* When: Today’s fifth race (First post noon)

* Television: Channel 11 (Coverage begins at 2 p.m.)

1 1/4 miles, 4-year-olds and up, $1 million purse

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PP Horse Jockey Wt Odds 1 Bagshot Chris Antley 113 20 2 General Challenge Corey Nakatani 121 9-5 3 Cat Thief Pat Day 120 7-2 4 Malek Alex Solis 118 10 5 Puerto Madero Laffit Pincay 118 15 6 Invitato Mio Danny Sorenson 110 30 7 Dixie Dot Com Kent Desormeaux 117 6 8 Budroyale Garrett Gomez 122 5-2

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