Favored Tiznow Has Robbins a Bit Edgy About Strub Stakes

Jack and Jay Robbins were talking on the phone the other night.

“You know,” Jack Robbins said to his son, “you’re going to be just as much a favorite as Damascus was against Most Host.”

“Oh, boy,” Jay Robbins said. “You’re not trying to jinx us, are you?”

In 1968, Jay Robbins was 22, on the verge of taking out his first trainer’s license, when Most Host, the horse campaigned by his parents, Jack and Maggie, and their partner Connie Bishop upset the mighty Damascus in the Strub Stakes at Santa Anita.

Damascus, who went off at 1-5 that muddy February day, was the reigning horse of the year, and so is Tiznow, the colt Jay Robbins will saddle Saturday, as another odds-on favorite, in the 54th running of the Strub.

Three weeks before his Strub, Damascus had beaten Most Host by two lengths in the San Fernando Stakes. Three weeks ago, Tiznow also won the San Fernando, beating Wooden Phone and Nurdlinger, two of the six horses entered Saturday.

For Jay Robbins, a trainer who finds jinxes everywhere and despises even the hint of one, this is the time to turn the page.

“I hope you’re not jinxing me,” Robbins said last Saturday, sitting in a box seat at Santa Anita.

He had been enjoying the day until someone mentioned that he could be taking a big bite out of Strub history with a victory by Tiznow. In the hearty annals of the unique stake for 4-year-olds, only three trainers have won the race three times. Robbins, who won the Strub with Nostalgia’s Star in 1986 and Flying Continental in 1990, could become the fourth.

“Who are the three?” Robbins asked.

Told they were Hall of Famers Bill Molter, Charlie Whittingham and Laz Barrera, Robbins whistled and said, “That would put me in pretty good company, wouldn’t it?”

The way the $500,000 Strub has unfolded, there are three other trainers in the field with two wins apiece. Bob Baffert is running a pair, Wooden Phone and Tribunal; Ron McAnally will saddle Jimmy Z, and Richard Mandella has entered Capo Di Capo, indicating that he’ll probably save him for the $300,000 San Antonio Handicap on Sunday. The other horse in the field, Nurdlinger, is trained by John Sadler.

The two years he won the Strub, Robbins didn’t go into the races with trumpets. Nostalgia’s Star had won only four of 27 starts, with a raft of seconds and thirds, and had been 53-1 when he ran second in the prep race, the San Fernando. His odds dropped to 5-1 in the Strub, but the field included Proud Truth, the Breeders’ Cup Classic winner, and owner Fritz Hawn’s strong entry of Fast Account and Right Con, winner of the San Fernando.

Trainer John Veitch had shipped Proud Truth from the East Coast, not knowing the weights would be based on a horse’s earnings. Proud Truth, who’d earned $1.35 million just for his Breeders’ Cup win, was assigned high weight of 126 pounds, nine to 12 pounds more than the other horses and 10 pounds more than Nostalgia’s Star.

Then the Strub came up muddy. Very muddy. Jorge Velasquez, who rode Proud Truth, said it was the worst track he had ridden over.

“Nostalgia’s Star was a funny-looking little dude, but he did like the mud,” said Jack Robbins, who, along with his wife, was a partner with Fred Duckett and Mary Jane Hinds in the ownership of the horse.

Bred by John and Betty Mabee, Nostalgia’s Star was fancied by Jay Robbins when the horse was a 2-year-old at Del Mar. After he’d won a stake at Los Alamitos, Robbins’ parents and the others bought him for $95,000.

Ridden by Fernando Toro, Nostalgia’s Star beat Roo Art by 3 1/2 lengths in the Strub, Proud Truth finishing fifth.

Nostalgia’s Star ran 30 more races, through his 6-year-old season in 1988, and won only four, but he was usually good enough for a paycheck, and was game enough to finish second in races like the Marlboro Cup, at Belmont Park, in 1987. He earned more than $1 million his last two years on the track and finished with nine wins in 59 starts and purses of $2.1 million.

“He didn’t do anything as a stud,” Jack Robbins said. “We finally just gave him away. He died last year.”

Flying Continental, 15 years old, stands at Harris Farms in Coalinga, Calif. He occupies a paddock not far from Cee’s Tizzy, the sire of Tiznow. Jack Kent Cooke’s Elmendorf Farm bred and raced Flying Continental, and in 1989 the strong-willed Cooke force-fed the son of Flying Paster into the Kentucky Derby. The Robbinses--Jay the trainer and Jack, who was Cooke’s racing manager--were along for the ride.

Flying Continental had finished second in the Santa Anita Derby, but the asterisk said that Sunday Silence had beaten him by 11 lengths.

“Then before the Kentucky Derby,” Jay Robbins said, “we ran [second] in the California Derby [at Golden Gate Fields]. The Kentucky Derby was his third race in a month. He had lost a lot of weight and looked like death warmed over.”

Sunday Silence won the Derby and Flying Continental, at 84-1, ran 12th.

A mudder like Nostalgia’s Star, a rested Flying Continental caught a muddy track in the 1990 San Fernando and won by three lengths. Three weeks later, he was 3-1, the second choice, in the Strub, and under Corey Black on another off track he beat Quiet American by half a length.

There were ups and downs the rest of the way. Flying Continental, shipped to Belmont in the fall of 1990, won the Jockey Club Gold Cup, against a field that included Canadian Triple Crown champion Izvestia. In 1991, though, he didn’t win a race, and by 1992 he had been sold by Cooke and transferred from Robbins’ barn. A 7-year-old in 1993, Flying Continental kicked around the Midwest and went winless in nine starts. His bottom line was 12 wins in 51 starts, and purses of $1.8 million.

The gap between Flying Continental’s Strub and Tiznow may have seemed like more than a decade to Jay Robbins. He saddled Reign Road, a 61-1 shot, for a third-place finish in the 1992 Strub. The lean years included 1998, when the barn won only seven races and earned less than $200,000.

Horse Racing Notes

Lasersport, undefeated in three starts, races five other 3-year-olds Saturday in the $150,000 San Vicente Stakes. Others running are Jamaican Rum, Early Flyer, D’wildcat, Bills Paid and Dr. Park. . . . There’s a two-day carry-over of $461,601 in the pick six.