It’s Not Pocket Change to Amerman

When the 3-year-old colt Blue Steller is loaded into the gate for the Sir Beaufort Stakes on today’s season-opening card at Santa Anita, his owner, John Amerman, will be watching, clutching three dimes in his hand.

Amerman always goes to the track with those dimes in his pocket, but the second, and more important part of his longtime superstition is having them in his hand when the race is being run.

“On Hollywood Futurity day [Dec. 15], I forgot,” Amerman said. “We had Heads Will Roll in the Dahlia Handicap, and she ran third at 4-5. When the race was over, I looked at my hand and realized that the dimes were still in my pocket. You can bet that I didn’t forget a little later, when they ran the Futurity.”

Amerman’s Siphonic, undefeated before running a creditable third in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, got off the dime in the Futurity, beating Officer and the rest to become the best threat on this side of the Atlantic for next year’s Kentucky Derby. Johannesburg, the Breeders’ Cup winner in his only U.S. start, is racing in Ireland and trainer Aidan O’Brien’s colt, unbeaten in seven races in four countries, is no guarantee to run at Churchill Downs in May.

With the older horses still sorting themselves out--Tiznow, Aptitude, Captain Steve and Point Given have gone to stud--much of the 85-day Santa Anita meet will focus on Siphonic, expected to run three times, starting with the Santa Catalina Stakes on Jan. 19 and ending with the Santa Anita Derby on April 6, a month before the Kentucky Derby. But Amerman Racing of El Segundo--John Amerman and Jerry, his wife of 43 years--may have something to say about the Santa Anita Handicap with Lido Palace, a Chilean-bred colt who was a horse-of-the-year contender until late this year.

“It’s funny about Lido Palace,” John Amerman said. “He’s run in Chile and Dubai and Japan and a lot of places in the U.S., but he’s never run in California. We plan to change that this year, and the [Santa Anita Handicap on March 2] is one of our goals.”

Lido Palace spent the winter at Hollywood Park before he and trainer Bobby Frankel hit the road. By September, Lido Palace had moved to the head of his class. He had won the Whitney Handicap at Saratoga, then beat Tiznow, last year’s horse of the year, in the Woodward at Belmont Park. That left the Amermans with a pricey option for the $4-million Breeders’ Cup Classic: They could fork over $800,000, a supplementary fee, to give the otherwise ineligible Lido Palace the chance to run.

“You’re out of your mind if you do that,” Frankel said frankly.

Still, John Amerman was considering the gamble. Lido Palace could have clinched horse-of-the-year honors with a victory in the Classic.

“We’re not going to do that!” Jerry Amerman said emphatically as the deadline for making the first payment neared.

In the final analysis, John Amerman agreed with his trainer and his wife. Amerman had been paying attention in 1998 when Gentlemen’s owner, R.D. Hubbard, paid an $800,000 supplement to make his Argentine-bred eligible for the Classic. Gentlemen suffered pulmonary bleeding in the race and finished last.

“[Trainer Richard Mandella] was devastated,” Amerman said. “I saw how badly he felt, and I didn’t want to subject Frankel to that kind of pressure. The other thing was the bottom line. Let’s face it, this is a business, and we would have had to win the race to come out ahead. Anything less--even running second--and we would have lost money.”

The morning of this year’s Classic, Amerman was at the barns at Belmont Park to look in on Siphonic and his trainer, David Hofmans, and later went by Frankel’s barn to see Lido Palace.

“He was running a fever,” Amerman said. “Bobby said that we wouldn’t have been able to run him even if we had put up the money. That would have been costly too.”

According to Breeders’ Cup regulations, the first third of the $800,000--more than $266,000--is due 12 days before the race and is not refundable, even in the event of a veterinarian’s scratch.

Lido Palace recovered and ran a month after the Breeders’ Cup in the $2-million Japan Cup Dirt in Tokyo, where he finished eighth at 5-2. Tiznow, who won the Classic for the second consecutive year, and Point Given, who won two-thirds of the Triple Crown, are the only horse-of-the-year choices left.

“I don’t want to make excuses for Lido Palace,” Amerman said. “You go over there and you know what their rules are and you try to adjust. They want to make sure the public sees the horses before they run. So the horses spend 20 minutes in the walking ring. Then they go out to the track, for a very long post parade. It was 75 minutes from the time our horse reached the paddock until he got to the gate. The Japanese horses are used to this routine, but I think Lido Palace ran his race while he was warming up.”

Lido Palace’s disappointing run in Tokyo wasn’t enough to blow out the Amermans’ candles in 2001. Starting horses in only 62 races, they’ve won 19--a 31% strike ratio--and finished in the money 69% of the time. Amerman Racing ranks 11th nationally with almost $3 million in purses.

Besides Lido Palace and Siphonic, the Amerman outfit campaigned five other graded stakes winners: Happyanunoit, retired and to be bred to Giant’s Causeway early next year; Heads Will Roll, who blew a shoe in the Dahlia; Blue Steller, winner of the Bay Meadows Derby; No Slip, scheduled to run in Sunday’s San Gabriel Handicap, and Printemps, described by Amerman as “the jewel that nobody knows about.”

When John and Jerry Amerman were living in North New Jersey, not far from Monmouth Park and long before a career climax as chairman of the toymaker Mattel Inc., they talked about racing a horse or two someday. That day didn’t come until they joined one of Barry Irwin’s Team Valor syndicates and shared in the successes of Star Of Cozzene, the Arlington Million winner in 1993.

Amerman, 69, said that when the first promotional flier from Team Valor arrived in the mail, he threw it away. He did the same with a second, but Jerry fished it out of the wastebasket and they were on their way.

“Racing is unlike any other business,” John Amerman said. “We have a plan and we work hard at it. Every week or two, Jerry and I sit down and figure out where we are and where we’re going. The lucky dimes don’t really mean anything, I know that, but I still like to do it and being lucky doesn’t hurt. Somebody up there likes us.”

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Santa Anita Facts

Meeting--65th.

Racing dates--Today through April 21. General racing week runs Wednesday through Sunday. No racing on Dec. 27, Jan. 3, Jan. 23 and Feb. 20.

Special racing dates--Dec. 31, Jan. 1, Jan. 21 and Feb. 18.

First race post times--Today: noon; Wednesday-Friday: 1 p.m.; Saturday, Sunday and holidays on Monday: 12:30 p.m.

Special first race post times--Jan. 1: 12:30 p.m.; Feb. 2: noon; Feb. 3: 11 a.m.; March 2: noon; April 6: noon; April 12: 3 p.m.; April 19: 3 p.m.

More information--By phone: (626) 574-7223. Web site: www.santaanita.com