McAnally Taking Plenty of Chances

The late Charlie Whittingham, a hall-of-fame trainer, would routinely start three horses in stakes races, and even ran 1-2-3 on several occasions.

“I like it when I’ve got them surrounded,” Whittingham would quip.

But Ron McAnally, who was inducted into the racing shrine in 1990 and has been training for about 45 years, can’t recall ever tripling up on the opposition. Now, against War Emblem, the Kentucky Derby winner and the early favorite for horse of the year, McAnally will take three shots in Sunday’s $1-million Pacific Classic at Del Mar.

What gives?

“They’re all longshots, but I think they deserve a chance,” McAnally said. “These horses are closers, and at this track, like Santa Anita, closers are capable of winning. At a track like Hollywood Park, closers don’t have much of a chance.”

McAnally is not the only trainer who smells an upset Sunday. This year’s Pacific Classic has drawn a record 14 horses. McAnally’s entries are Jimmy Z, Seinne and Tapatio, who are all 30-1 on the morning line. War Emblem is the 2-1 favorite.

Actually, McAnally was in a position to start four horses in the 1 1/4-mile dirt race, but he’s decided to leave Oh Take, a major winner in Argentina at the Pacific Classic distance, in the barn.

Nelson Bunker Hunt, who bought Oh Take three days before the horse won a Grade I race in South America in late June, will still be represented Sunday when the 70-year-old McAnally saddles the Chilean-bred Seinne, a 5-year-old whose recent strong races, including a win in Santa Anita’s Arcadia Handicap, have been on grass.

“Seinne can run on dirt,” McAnally said. “He won what amounts to a Breeders’ Cup race on dirt in Argentina.”

Nelson Bunker Hunt, that name rings a bell.

At 76, the defrocked Texas billionaire is having a renewed love affair with racing. Hunt began buying horses again three years ago, after an ill-fated attempt at cornering the world silver market in the 1980s led to bankruptcy and the short-circuiting of a racing empire that produced champions on both sides of the Atlantic.

The names Dahlia, Youth, Empery, Vaguely Noble and Trillion scratch only the surface of the very best Hunt raced. In fact, his premier horse was arguably the Whittingham-trained Exceller, never a winner of an Eclipse Award, even though he won the 1978 Hollywood Gold Cup and later in the year beat two Triple Crown champions, Seattle Slew and Affirmed, in the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park.

Whether it was finance or racing, Hunt’s philosophical mind-set was a good fit for high-stakes wheeling and dealing. When his personal fortunes turned turtle, he offhandedly said: “You know, a billion dollars isn’t what it used to be.”

When Hunt unloaded his bloodstock in a record dispersal sale in 1988, Whittingham all but predicted that his longtime client wasn’t finished with racing.

“Bunker’s not out till he’s out,” Whittingham said, sounding a whole lot like Yogi Berra.

Until Hunt’s second time around, McAnally had never trained a horse for the Dallas oilman who won an Eclipse as best breeder three times. The closest he came was with Palace Music, the sire of Cigar, the two-time horse of the year and upset victim of Dare And Go in the 1996 Pacific Classic.

“Palace Music was in my barn at the start,” McAnally said. “Bunker was a partner of Allen Paulson [Cigar’s owner], and I was training a lot of Paulson’s horses at the time. But I went out of town for several days, to buy some horses at a sale, and by the time I got back, [Palace Music] had been moved to [Whittingham’s] barn.”

Jimmy Z, another of McAnally’s hopefuls Sunday, is a 5-year-old gelding who races for Jerry and Ann Moss. Jimmy Z, who’ll be ridden by Pat Valenzuela, Del Mar’s leading rider this season, has won only two of 22 starts, but at 1 1/16 miles here Aug. 4, he finished a creditable second to Pleasantly Perfect, another Pacific Classic starter.

Rounding out McAnally’s contingent is Tapatio, a Gary Tanaka-owned Argentine-bred who’s been no better than fourth in four U.S. grass starts.

McAnally has won 397 races at Del Mar, more than anybody else, and he’s No. 2--behind Whittingham--on the stakes list here, but in 11 years of Pacific Classics, he’s had only four starters and never done better than Festin’s fourth in 1991, the first year the race was run.

“Realistically, you look at this race and it looks like there ought to be a fast pace,” McAnally said. “[Trainer Paco Gonzalez] has a second horse [Bosque Redondo] in there to ensure a good pace for his other horse [Came Home]. All of this might help closers like Milwaukee Brew, who was too far back in the Hollywood Gold Cup.”

The Pacific Classic is not exactly an oasis for favorites. Only one public choice--Gentlemen, in 1997--has won the stake. Among the winners have been Dare And Go, who paid $81.20 for $2 when he upended Cigar, and Missionary Ridge, who won at 24-1 in 1992. War Emblem has that history--and McAnally’s longshot trio--to overcome.

*

The race that War Emblem might have run, today’s $1-million Travers at Saratoga, has drawn heavy favorite Medaglia d’Oro and eight other 3-year-olds that appear to be overmatched.

“This is the first time I’ve had the chance to really train this horse, rather than just running him and running him,” said Bobby Frankel, who trains Medaglia d’Oro. “If he shows up, he should win.”

Medaglia d’Oro, after the grueling Triple Crown run in which his best finish was the second behind Sarava in the Belmont, blew out the opposition in the Jim Dandy at Saratoga three weeks ago, winning by 13 3/4 lengths.

The colt’s most intriguing rival is Repent, one of the favorites for the Kentucky Derby before he ran second to War Emblem in the Illinois Derby and underwent ankle surgery. The 1 1/4-mile Travers will be Repent’s first start in 4 1/2 months.

“He’s run well off a layoff before,” trainer Ken McPeek said. “I actually wish War Emblem was in this race. We beat him once, and I would have had no fear about taking him on again.”