Mandella Admitted to Hall of Fame

Fifteen minutes into trainer Richard Mandella’s Racing Hall of Fame news conference, his cell phone rang. The wry horseman turned it off and continued to field questions.

“That was probably Sheik Mohammed [the Dubai crown prince who races hundreds of horses] that I just hung up on,” Mandella cracked. “He probably won’t call back.”

Thwarted the last two years, when Wayne Lukas and Neil Drysdale were voted into the Hall of Fame, Mandella finally outpolled the others on the ballot. This time Mel Stute and the late Sonny Hine were the runners-up.

“My first reaction was disbelief,” Mandella said. “There are things in life that you want so bad that you never get them. I never thought this could happen. I’ve got many to thank--my parents, my wonderful help and the horses. Other than that, I don’t know what to say.”

Besides Mandella, jockey Earlie Fires and the horses Holy Bull, Paseana and Maskette will be enshrined in the Hall of Fame Aug. 6 in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. The results of the balloting by 145 turf writers, broadcasters and other racing figures were announced Tuesday at Churchill Downs.

Mandella, 50, once won six consecutive $1-million races in California, he won two Breeders’ Cup races on the same day, and his Dare And Go ended Cigar’s 16-race winning streak in 1996, but the horse that has meant the most to him, he said Tuesday, was Bad N Big, whose campaigning corresponded with the start of the trainer’s career.

“I got Bad N Big my third year of training [1977],” Mandella said. “He stayed until he was 8 years old. He wasn’t the best, but he was pretty darn good. I wouldn’t be here today if something like that hadn’t happened.”

Fires, 54, has ridden for 36 years, mostly in the Midwest, and won 6,136 races. Others on the jockey ballot were Craig Perret and the late Jack Westrope.

Holy Bull was voted horse of the year in 1994, when he won eight stakes in 10 starts. Overall, he won 13 times in 16 starts, earning purses of $2.4 million.

The Argentine-bred Paseana won Eclipse Awards as best older female in 1992 and 1993. She finished with 19 wins in 36 starts and purses of $3.1 million.

Maskette was elected in the horses-of-yesteryear category. The filly raced in 1908-1910, winning 12 of 17 starts.