Tiznow’s Encore Is a True Fall Classic

Sakhee and his jockey, Frankie Dettori, kept passing Tiznow and Chris McCarron as the two horses slugged it out through the long stretch at Belmont Park. From the eighth pole home, Sakhee edged ahead twice, but Tiznow kept coming back. Dettori must have thought that he was trapped in some kind of bad dream.

“When I went by Tiznow,” Dettori said, “I was more worried that some other horse might be coming after us on the outside. My horse’s petrol gauge was pushing toward empty.”

It was Tiznow, however, that Dettori needed to repeatedly heed. About 40 yards from the wire, Sakhee was still ahead by a neck, but Tiznow was coming back and in a stride or two regained the lead to stay.

“That horse has a head like a dinosaur,” Dettori said. “I knew I had to get by him by a length and a half to beat him for sure.”

It was a year ago when Tiznow used that dinosaur head to win the Breeders’ Cup Classic by a neck. This time--Saturday at Belmont Park--all McCarron’s horse needed was a prominent nose. In an epic finish, Tiznow became the first horse to win the Classic for the second time, and now is a late-arriving candidate for a second horse-of-the-year title.

“He’s the horse of my life--I’m not worried about horse of the year,” said Mike Cooper, who manages Tiznow in a partnership that includes Pamela Ziebarth and Kevin Cochrane, the children of the late Cee Straub-Rubens. Ill with cancer, Straub-Rubens was 83 when she died in a Newport Beach hospital last year, three days after watching the horse she bred win his first Classic at Churchill Downs.

“When we won [Saturday], Cee was on my mind instantly,” Cooper said. “She was such a special lady and a special friend. But I think she was here in spirit. The way Tiznow came back in the race and gutted it out was kind of like the way she was too.”

Sakhee’s heart-wrenching loss was not enough to spoil the best day the Europeans have had in the Breeders’ Cup, which was first run in 1984. For the first time, the Euros won four races. Sheik Mohammed’s Godolphin Racing, which owns Sakhee, won two, with Fantastic Light in the Turf and the California-based Tempera in the Juvenile Fillies; Johannesburg, from Ireland, upset Officer in the Juvenile, and the French-based Banks Hill won the Filly & Mare Turf.

Given the unrest following the terrorist attacks 20 miles from Belmont Park on Sept. 11, the crowd of 52,987, in dry, 40-degree weather, was surprisingly good and in fact was higher than the three previous Breeders’ Cups run in New York. Security was heavy, and Sheik Mohammed, who’s from Dubai, and Khalid Abdullah, the Saudi Arabian prince who races Banks Hill, stayed home. Of the $13 million in purse money, about $2.7 million was donated by horsemen to a special fund for families of the terrorists’ victims. Sheik Mohammed, who had pledged 100% of his horses’ earnings, accounted for $2.5 million of that total.

In the other races, Squirtle Squirt won the Sprint, giving trainer Bobby Frankel his first Breeders’ Cup win after 38 losing starters; Unbridled Elaine captured the Distaff; and Val Royal won the Mile.

Even before the first Breeders’ Cup race was run, however, some fans were quickly reminded of the series’ last stop in New York--1995--when three horses, including the incomparable Go For Wand, died. This time there was only a nasty scare, when Exogenous, the second choice in the Distaff, reared up just before entering the track for the post parade, dumped her jockey and suffered what were first described as life-threatening injuries. Emergency treatment back at the barn took the 3-year-old filly out of danger.

Otherwise, the day will be remembered for its solid, if unpredictable, racing. Fantastic Light was the only favorite to win. Tiznow, despite his reputation, paid $15.80 as the fourth choice in the Classic. The 4-year-old colt, the only California-bred to ever win a Breeders’ Cup race, had had an erratic year, suffering a back injury that sidelined him for five months after his March win in the Santa Anita Handicap, and in recent months frustrating McCarron and his veteran trainer, Jay Robbins, with morning-workout antics that made him difficult to train. Tiznow had finished third--at Belmont and Santa Anita--in his only two starts since the Big ‘Cap.

McCarron concluded that Tiznow was reacting to boredom, and Robbins went through a catalog of training panaceas that didn’t work. Last weekend, Robbins even considered giving the horse vodka to settle him down. If a local liquor store hadn’t been closed last Sunday, the colt would have had his first hard drink. But then in the days leading up to the race, giving Tiznow his way--allowing him to take all the time he wanted to go from the barn to the track--finally seemed to please him.

Even in victory Saturday, McCarron wasn’t convinced that Tiznow was running to his full potential.

“He wins the photos, but he gives us heart failure,” said the jockey, who has won the Classic a record five times. “After many of his races, you always feel like there’s more there. He doesn’t seem to be giving 100%. I long for the day when he pulls a Secretariat and wins by 31 [lengths].”

Sakhee, who won the Arc de Triomphe in Paris three weeks ago and was running on dirt for the first time, finished 13/4 lengths ahead of Albert The Great. Aptitude, the 2-1 favorite, had won by 10 lengths at Belmont on Oct. 6, but never threatened Saturday and ran eighth in the 13-horse field. The winning time for 11/4 miles on a fast track was 2:00 3/5.

“He ran very, very wide,” jockey Jerry Bailey said of Aptitude, who broke from the No. 12 post. “I expected to get a start like that because of the post, but I didn’t expect to finish like that.”

Guided Tour kept the pace-setting Albert The Great company through the first six furlongs, with Tiznow looming in third place. Sakhee wasn’t too far back from those three and took over the lead at the head of the stretch.

“At the eighth pole,” McCarron said, “I thought I was running for second money. But I don’t have a good enough vocabulary to describe my horse’s resolve. He’s absolutely awesome.”

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THE WINNERS

Top finishers with jockeys and $2 win payoff in the eight Breeders’ Cup races:

DISTAFF

UNBRIDLED ELAINE, Pat Day $26.60

JUVENILE FILLIES

TEMPERA, David Flores $25.80

MILE

VAL ROYAL, Jose Valdivia $12.20

SPRINT

SQUIRTLE SQUIRT, Jerry Bailey $21.20

FILLY AND MARE TURF

BANKS HILL, Mike Smith $14.00

JUVENILE

JOHANNESBURG, Mick Kinane $16.40

TURF

FANTASTIC LIGHT, Frankie Dettori $4.80

CLASSIC

TIZNOW, Chris McCarron $15.80

DIFFERENT BREED

Jockey Chris McCarron’s Breeders’ Cup victories:

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Year Race Horse 1985 Sprint Precisionist 1988 Classic Alysheba 1989 Classic Sunday Silence 1992 Distaff Paseana 1992 Juvenile Gilded Time 1995 Turf Northern Spur 1996 Classic Alphabet Soup 2000 Classic Tiznow 2001 Classic Tiznow

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