Pincay Wins Meet Title With a Finishing Kick

These are the days when it’s especially hard to pass Laffit Pincay in the stretch, when any horse he rides has a chance.

Needing a win Monday to break a tie with Alex Solis, the 54-year-old Pincay opened a lead with Ride And Shine in the last race on the last day of the Hollywood Park meet and rode the previously winless 4-year-old gelding to a three-length victory. Pincay thus beat out Solis for the meet title, 64-63, at the track where he rang up his first of 15 championships in 1968.

“It feels great,” Pincay said after Solis congratulated him and they had posed for pictures in the winner’s circle. “I’m surprised I won, because Alex was kind of tough. But it was good for racing. The fans were out here rooting, and both of us deserved it. This feels great because of my age. At this point, I never thought I’d be fighting for leading rider.”

Fellow Panamanian Solis, 37, has won seven Hollywood Park titles and seemed to have earned a tie with Pincay by riding The Seven Seas to victory in the $106,500 Estrapade Stakes, the next-to-last race of the season. But in the nightcap, Pincay clicked with Ride And Shine, who had lost 12 straight, all with other jockeys, while Solis finished eighth aboard Stuff And Nonsense.

The two riders went into the 66th and final day with 61 wins apiece. Solis rode two winners, but Pincay finished with three, the first victory coming in the second race, the $75,025 Answer Do Stakes, astride Gibson County. The 4-year-old colt was the 7-10 favorite, but Pincay’s next win, in the seventh race, was with Backhaul, an 8-1 shot that had shipped in from Kentucky.

Pincay picked up the mount on Gibson County because David Flores, the horse’s scheduled rider, was still nursing injuries after being kicked in the paddock Friday.

“I got lucky, picking up that mount, and that made the difference,” Pincay said. “I hope my luck continues and the [trainers] keep giving me good horses.”

Solis’ first win of the day was on Kipper’s Kitten for Jack Carava, who with 22 wins edged Bob Baffert by one for the first training title of his eight-year career. Baffert’s lone win Monday was with Gibson County.

Pincay will go into Wednesday’s meet at Del Mar with 9,183 victories. He broke Bill Shoemaker’s record of 8,833 wins on Dec. 10, 1999, at Hollywood Park. Remarkably, Pincay has won 349 races since then.

Pincay, who also won this year’s Santa Anita title, is realistically on the way to 10,000 wins. A jockey who has battled the scales for years, he’s now in better control of his riding weight than ever.

“I feel very proud of what I’ve done,” he said. “As long as I’m feeling well and riding good horses, why should I retire? I’m doing something I enjoy and I’m having fun. As long as it keeps going that way, I’m going to keep going.”

Asked about his chances to reach 10,000, Pincay said, “Let’s wait two or three years, and then we’ll see.”

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Because of California’s energy crisis, Hollywood Park traded night racing for twilight cards on Fridays. And although the results were crushing, track officials were generally pleased with the meet’s final numbers.

Average daily handle from all sources was $10.3 million, a dip of 2% from the record average last year, and on-track attendance, jarred by the dramatic downward swing on Fridays, dropped to a daily average of 8,345, a decline of almost 13%. Hollywood Park is likely to return to Friday night racing next year.

“We were [still] very encouraged by the fact that we were up in both attendance and handle on all but one of our major days,” said Rick Baedeker, Hollywood Park’s president. “We are increasingly concerned that our core business is taking a daily hit from people who are not coming to the track and are betting through other means. We hope pending legislation will legalize account wagering in California and allow us to recoup those losses.”

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For the 13th consecutive year, Del Mar will open its season by running the Oceanside Stakes in two divisions.

Eleven horses will run Wednesday in each half of the Oceanside as Del Mar launches season No. 62.

Trainer Ron McAnally, who has won a division of the Oceanside each of the last two seasons, will try to win Wednesday’s second half with Broadway Moon, a 3-year-old colt that hasn’t run since his second-place finish behind Startac in the Generous Stakes at Hollywood Park on Nov. 25. Broadway Moon made his debut last summer at Del Mar, posting a pair of thirds, before breaking his maiden at a mile on grass--the same conditions as the Oceanside--at Santa Anita in October.