They Have This Routine Down Pat

It’s heavy in irony that the arcs in the careers of trainer Patrick Biancone and jockey Pat Valenzuela should cross in today’s Santa Anita Derby. Biancone is still recovering from his bitter clash with Hong Kong racing authorities three years ago, and Valenzuela, as he did through most of the 1990s, is once more trying to convince horsemen that his many lapses into drug and alcohol abuse will not reoccur.

The horse that has brought these two troubled Pats together is Mayakovsky. Named after a Russian poet from the early 1900s, the fast Florida-bred colt has made the most of a three-race career that will send him off as the second choice, behind Came Home, in today’s $750,000 race. It is a race that Valenzuela has won twice, at 17 with Codex in 1980 and nine years later with Sunday Silence, who also gave the jockey a Kentucky Derby victory during one of the times when the cobwebs of cocaine had temporarily shifted from his life.

“Everybody knows who Patrick is and how good he can be,” said Biancone, who could just as easily been describing himself. “Five years ago, I wouldn’t have even considered him for this. But what is important to me is the Patrick of today. He is riding at the top of his game and he has the experience in these kinds of races. There is not a jockey at Santa Anita who works more horses in the mornings than he does. You can see that the fire is back in his eyes.”

After 22 months on the sidelines, Valenzuela, 39, was relicensed under strict monitoring conditions in December and about two weeks later he scored his first win in almost two years. He has won 27 more races since then, to become one of the leaders in the Santa Anita standings, and today will ride in the track’s premier 3-year-old race for the first time since 1994.

“I’m just happy to be back and have a chance to get in this position,” said Valenzuela, who got on Mayakovsky’s back for the first time when the colt worked a half-mile in 481/5 seconds Tuesday. “The horse hasn’t done anything wrong and he’s a very good prospect.”

The door at Santa Anita’s barn 76 opened to Valenzuela when Edgar Prado, the only jockey to have ridden Mayakovsky in the afternoon, chose to ride the longshot Bowman’s Band in Arkansas today in the $500,000 Oaklawn Handicap. More to the point, Prado also rides Harlan’s Holiday, the Florida Derby winner and, after a final prep in the Blue Grass at Keeneland a week from today, his Kentucky Derby mount at Churchill Downs on May 4.

“I don’t think I’ve ever rooted for a horse harder than when I watched the Florida Derby on TV,” Valenzuela said. “I was rooting for Harlan’s Holiday to keep going, because I knew I was sitting behind Prado on Mayakovsky.”

Owned by Michael Tabor of Monte Carlo, who won the Kentucky Derby with Thunder Gulch in 1995, Mayakovsky returns Biancone to a limelight that the third-generation French trainer basked in regularly during the 1980s. He twice won the Arc de Triomphe, France’s signature race, with the filly All Along and Sagace, and trained other champions. After her Arc triumph, All Along crossed the Atlantic with Biancone and in a matter of 28 days she blew the doors off North America’s best grass runners, winning major races in Maryland, New York and Canada by a combined 16 lengths. All Along was voted the Eclipse Award for horse of the year, the first female national titlist in 18 years.

In 1990, a restless Biancone moved his operation to Hong Kong, where some early successes were marred by a series of positive drug tests for horses that by 1999 resulted in a 10-month suspension.

“My divorce [he’s now married to a former Miss Hong Kong] was bloody, but this was even worse,” Biancone said. “I’m the only trainer in the world who got [that length of suspension] for a Class 4 drug [an anabolic steroid]. I was not allowed to bring in witnesses that might have argued my side. There was no right of appeal. It was a dirty way to handle things.”

Biancone, 49, credits Frank Stronach, the owner of Santa Anita as well as a formidable racing and breeding operation, with resurrecting his career. He said that Stronach signed him on as a racing advisor in December 1999 and helped him get his U.S. work visa six months later. Biancone wound up training some Stronach horses in California, but they were of no consequence and now, still friends with Stronach, he is a public trainer who will move his headquarters to Belmont Park next week as he tries to develop a stable. Most of his clients are in Europe and consider New York handier than California.

This year, Biancone has won only two races, one at Santa Anita (ridden by Valenzuela) and the Gotham Stakes with Mayakovsky on March 17. That was the colt’s first start since Sept. 1, when he ran second to Came Home in the Hopeful at Saratoga. In his first start, Mayakovsky ran 51/2 furlongs in 1:031/5, breaking a Saratoga record that was set in 1946.

His 2-year-old campaign ended abruptly on Sept. 25, when a hairline fracture was discovered in his rear left leg.

“No surgery was required,” Biancone said, “and the prognosis was that with rest he would be back within 60 to 90 days.

“If it had been 90 days, we would have had little chance to be where we are now. But it was 60 days when I got him back and the injury had healed perfectly. He has to be a good horse to overcome what he’s been through.”

In the 11/8-mile Santa Anita Derby, Biancone said, Mayakovsky must not only run well but show that he might like the extra furlong that comes with the Kentucky Derby.

In the Gotham, other horsemen pointed out that the colt drifted out badly through the stretch.

“He did that in his first race too,” Biancone said. “I would have been more concerned had he drifted in, but we were still concerned. We checked him out completely after the race and could find nothing wrong.”

Should Mayakovsky make the Kentucky Derby, he would be running at Churchill Downs off just four career races.

The last Derby winner to be that lightly raced was Exterminator in 1918.

Blindfolded before he would enter the starting gate, Flying Dash turned his U.S. debut into a 21/2-length victory in the $100,000 Transylvania as Keeneland opened its spring meet.

Flying Dash, ridden by Jerry Bailey, is owned by Fusao Sekiguchi and trained by Neil Drysdale, who combined to win the Kentucky Derby with Fusaichi Pegasus in 2000.