With Weight of Expectations, Kona Gold Wins by a Neck

Two of Kona Gold’s 10 previous wins had come by less than a length, but neither of those was tighter than the 7-year-old gelding’s narrow victory Sunday in the $200,900 Potrero Grande Handicap at Santa Anita.

“This was a tougher race on him than the Breeders’ Cup,” said co-owner and trainer Bruce Headley, after his Kona Gold prevailed by a neck as Hollycombe and Explicit dead-heated for second place.

Kona Gold carried 126 pounds, 10 more than Explicit and 12 more than Hollycombe. Explicit was assigned 113 pounds, but his jockey, David Flores, rode with three pounds of overweight.

Headley is not thrilled by the weight Kona Gold has been asked to concede, and in what appeared to be a back-handed compliment, he said:

“They’re great handicappers [in the Santa Anita racing office]. They made a four-horse race very exciting. I was saying that I was sorry I didn’t run him in the Palos Verdes [on Jan. 28], but if he had won that race they would have put two more pounds on him today, and he would have gotten beat.”

As it was, Kona Gold made his second start of the year and won his sixth in a row, dating to March of last year. Winner of last year’s four-horse Potrero Grande by 4 1/2 lengths, Kona Gold is the first horse to win the stake twice, the highest-weighted winner of the race and his $2.60 win payoff Sunday matched the race low set by Halo Folks--another Headley runner--in 1986.

Since the first Potrero Grande in 1983, no other trainer has won the race more than twice and Headley has now won it four times. Besides Halo Folks’ victory and the two by Kona Gold, the trainer also won with Son Of A Pistol in 1998.

Ridden by Alex Solis, who has been aboard for 18 consecutive races since Chris McCarron finished second with Kona Gold in his debut in May 1998, Headley’s horse completed 6 1/2 furlongs in 1:15. Kona Gold was third after the opening mile, 2 1/2 lengths behind Explicit, who set opening fractions of :21 1/5 and :44.

“He didn’t quite have his usual speed today,” Solis said after Kona Gold’s 11th victory in 19 starts. “I think that might have been because I worked him a little slow (three furlongs in :37 1/5) the other day. He relaxed a little bit too much, but, just like always, he was very game.”

At the eighth pole, Kona Gold was on the outside, in second place and within a head of Explicit and Flores.

“For a second, I thought we were going to get there,” Flores said. “But that old horse, he’s just too much. Kona Gold is unbelievable.”

Kona Gold’s closest previous win was by a half-length over Honest Lady in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Churchill Downs in November. That was the race that clinched champion sprinter honors for the son of Java Gold.

“This race was tougher than the Breeders’ Cup because he was spotting all that weight today,” Headley said. “Two of the other horses were coming into this race off good wins. The other one [Hollycombe] is trained by Paco Gonzalez, who always has his horses ready to run, and was ridden by Chris McCarron, who’s the best. So I thought it would be close all the way. It was too close for me. My horse is such a trier. If he wasn’t a trier, he wouldn’t have won.”

Romanzo completed the order of finish, running four lengths behind Explicit and Hollycombe.

Headley, whose partners in Kona Gold are Irwin and Andrew Molasky of Las Vegas, had talked last week of running him in Kentucky again, in the Churchill Downs Handicap on May 5, which is Kentucky Derby day. But that thought has been discarded.

“I’m resting him after this,” Headley said. “This race was too tough on him. He had to reach down and really dig.”

En route to another appearance in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, at Belmont Park on Oct. 27, Kona Gold is likely to run twice--in races he won last year, the Bing Crosby Handicap at Del Mar on July 22 and the Ancient Title at Santa Anita in early October.

Notes

Chris McCarron’s sixth-race victory with Red Eye was the 6,992nd of his career. . . . Seven horses--Point Given, Crafty C.T., I Love Silver, Palmeiro, Startac, Scorpion and Early Flyer--are listed for next Saturday’s $750,000 Santa Anita Derby. Early Flyer might wind up running instead in the $200,000 California Derby at Bay Meadows on April 14. . . . The California Horse Racing Board has approved Hollywood Park’s request to switch from night to twilight racing on all Friday nights except the meet opener April 20.