Pincay Riding High in Saddle Once Again
From early in 1991 until late in 1999, Laffit Pincay failed to win a riding title at any of Southern California’s three major tracks. Many local trainers had made him a graybeard--ahead of his time.
Instead, Pincay has become Dorian Gray, without trading his soul. He led Hollywood Park’s meet at the end of 1999, and now, having won titles at two of the last three meets and missing a third by a victory, it’s clear that he isn’t finished. He’ll ride tonight in seven races--more business than he sometimes had in a week in the past--as Hollywood launches a 66-day season with a nine-race program.
This will be Hollywood Park’s only night card of the meet, a departure from the track’s original schedule. Because of the statewide electricity crunch, track officials made twilight programs--with a 3:30 p.m. first post--out of their 12 other Fridays.
They could run the races at midnight and Pincay, rejuvenated at 54, wouldn’t mind. When the Santa Anita season ended Monday, he had ridden 73 winners for the 40th meet title of his career. His purse total of $3.6 million ranks him fourth nationally, and two weeks from Saturday he’ll be riding Millennium Wind, the Blue Grass winner, at Churchill Downs. It will be his first Kentucky Derby in seven years.
Some of Pincay’s greatest moments have come at Hollywood Park, the apex on Dec. 10, 1999, when he won a race with Irish Nip for win No. 8,834, the victory that broke Bill Shoemaker’s career record.
Pincay enters the Hollywood Park meet with 9,117 victories. Four more years like the last one, when he won 200 races for the first time in nine years, and he’d be approaching an unthinkable plateau, the 10,000-win mark.
Hot hand and all, it will take some creative riding from Pincay for Imperial Measure, a British-bred colt, to win tonight’s one-mile grass feature, the $100,000 Will Rogers Handicap. Imperial Measure, who has never run in the United States, won only two of seven starts in England, neither of the victories farther than six furlongs, and he hasn’t started in eight months.
Pincay has won the Will Rogers six times, none since 1989 and two fewer than Shoemaker.
The favorite will be another English-bred, trainer Bobby Frankel’s Marine, who enters the stake off a victory at the same distance in the La Puente at Santa Anita on March 31. Frankel has another 3-year-old in the race, the French-bred Forestnikov, who will be making his first U.S. start.
Among Pincay’s milestones at Hollywood Park was his 7,000th victory, in 1988, and track officials are standing by, hoping that Chris McCarron will soon hit the 7,000 mark at their track. McCarron, who is at 6,997, is not riding at Hollywood tonight. He’s riding in four stakes, including the mount on Burning Roma in the $200,000 Federico Testio Stakes, at Pimlico Saturday, before returning to California to ride at Hollywood Park on Sunday.
The highlight of the Hollywood Park season is the $750,000 Hollywood Gold Cup, which was a $1-million purse for the last six years. The $250,000 that was taken out of the Gold Cup purse has been added to the Californian, which becomes a $500,000 prep race. The Californian will be run on June 10 and the Gold Cup on July 1. Hollywood officials hopes that Tiznow, the 2000 horse of the year, will run in both races, but his trainer, Jay Robbins, is currently planning to run first in the $750,000 Pimlico Special on May 12.
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With the trainers of some of the horses hoping for strong efforts that might lead to the Kentucky Derby, 10 horses will be running Saturday in the $325,000 Coolmore Lexington Stakes at Keeneland. Swale ran second in the 1984 Lexington before winning the Derby, and, in 1999, Charismatic won the Lexington and the Derby.
Wayne Lukas, who trained Charismatic, has had at least one Derby starter every year since 1980, and his streak may end this year if Turnberry Isle doesn’t run well enough in the Lexington to merit a trip to Churchill Downs.
Trainer Bob Baffert, who has the two Derby favorites in Santa Anita Derby winner Point Given and Wood Memorial winner Congaree, could have a third starter at Churchill if Global Gait runs successfully in the Lexington.
Saturday’s field, in post-position order: Griffinite, Bonnie Scot, Stable Secret, Turnberry Isle, Camden Park, Keats, Distilled, Bay Eagle, Mr. John and Global Gait.
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Trainer John Ward said that Hero’s Tribute, who ran last in the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland last Saturday, will skip the Kentucky Derby and be pointed for the Preakness, the middle leg of the Triple Crown, at Pimlico on May 19.
Ward thought that Hero’s Tribute might have re-injured a cracked hoof in the Blue Grass, but the colt came back clean in a post-race examination.
Notes
Pincay has won 2,884 races at Hollywood Park. Shoemaker is second in the standings with 2,416. Shoemaker leads Pincay, 280-270, in stakes wins at the track. Pincay set the one-season Hollywood record in 1974, when he won 148 races during a 76-day meet. . . . Frankel has won the last two meet titles at Hollywood. He finished first in the standings with 23 victories at last year’s spring-summer meet and was also the fall leader, with 14 wins. . . . Noble Threewitt, who’s hired Pincay to ride his Backtogood, a first-time starter in tonight’s last race, has been training at Hollywood since the track opened. Threewitt, 90, saddled Sir Thomas, a winner on the fourth day of the inaugural meet on June 15, 1938. . . . White Heart, winner of the Charlie Whittingham Memorial Handicap at Hollywood last year, will make his first start since September in Saturday’s $100,000 Inglewood Handicap. . . . Arthur A. Seeligson Jr., who campaigned Avatar, Unconscious and other stakes winners, died in Texas on Tuesday.
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Hollywood Park At a Glance
* Dates--Today-July 16
(66 days)
* Post times--7:15 tonight, 3:30 p.m. on remaining Fridays; 1:10 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Mondays (May 14 and July 16); 1 p.m. Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.
* Significant races--$250,000 Gamely Breeders’ Cup Handicap, May 26; $350,000 Shoemaker Breeders’ Cup Mile, May 28; $250,000 Milady Breeders’ Cup Handicap, June 3; $500,000 Californian, June 10; $350,000 Charlie Whittingham Memorial Handicap, June 10; $250,000 Beverly Hills Handicap, June 24; $300,000 Vanity Handicap, June 30; $750,000 Hollywood Gold Cup, July 1; $500,000 Swaps Stakes, July 15; $250,000 Sunset Handicap, July 15.
* Leading jockey (2000)--Victor Espinoza, 62 victories.
* Leading trainer (2000)--Bobby Frankel, 23 victories.
