Always Jumping at the Chance

Add Pompeyo to the list of posthumous Eclipse award winners that includes, among others, Ruffian, Landaluce, Swale and Go For Wand.

What further distinguishes Pompeyo from most Eclipse winners is that he was a top runner on the flat in Chile before being introduced to the steeplechase game. Then in 1998-99 he wound up in trainer Neil Drysdale’s care at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park.

In the first race for Drysdale, Pompeyo won at 11/4 miles at Hollywood, but it was all downhill after that. In the 1998 Hollywood Turf Cup, Pompeyo finished last, beaten by about 15 lengths. In 1999, Drysdale ran Pompeyo on the dirt, and when he finished last again--beaten by 261/2 lengths--in the San Bernardino Handicap, it was time to give up.

Drysdale suggested to Pompeyo’s owner, George Strawbridge, that the horse be given a chance over the jumps. Last Monday night in Miami Beach, Strawbridge and his stepdaughter, trainer Sanna Neilson, accepted an Eclipse bronze after the 7-year-old was voted best steeplechase horse for 2001.

Pompeyo, undefeated in his only two starts last year, was being prepared for the Breeders’ Cup Steeplechase in the fall when he was kicked by a stablemate as they prepared to go out for a gallop. A broken elbow required surgery, an infection set in and the horse was euthanized in mid-January.

“Sanna did a good job with him,” Drysdale said. “Sometimes horses make better jumpers. He was a difficult character when I had him. He was strong, too strong, and he was pulling all the time. We could never get him to settle in his races. When he started jumping, he began to settle nicely.”

Pompeyo had come to Drysdale with fancy credentials. He won the Chilean Derby in 1997 and Strawbridge bought him and brought him to the U.S. the next year.

“When he was in California, he would jog forever on the training track, but never do any real training,” Strawbridge said. “He was never fit for his races. But when we started putting him over the fences, he got focused.”

Pompeyo ran 11 steeplechase races, with seven wins, two seconds and two thirds. On the flat, he had four wins in 22 starts.

“It’s a shame that we don’t have him anymore,” Neilson said. “If he could have kept going, I think he could have been the next Flatterer or Lonesome Glory.”

In the 1980s, Flatterer won four straight Eclipses for steeplechasing and has been voted into the Racing Hall of Fame. Lonesome Glory was an Eclipse winner five times in the 1990s. Like Pompeyo, Flatterer came from the flat ranks, where he had trouble winning even at the claiming level.

“That’s the big difference between the two horses,” said Bill Gallo Jr., director of racing for the National Steeplechase Assn. “Pompeyo was an established stakes winner before he turned to jumping.”

Years ago, another flat runner--a disaster, actually--found a new life with a different venue. Remember Great Redeemer? A hapless maiden, he finished so far behind Spectacular Bid in the 1979 Kentucky Derby that he almost ran over a couple of photographers, who were crossing the track to the winner’s circle, thinking all the horses had passed.

Later that year, in an unexplained incident, Great Redeemer’s owner, J.A. Mohamed, found him bleeding in his stall at Laurel Race Course, suffering from a four-inch knife wound. Four years later, Diane and Bob King of North Lima, Ohio, found a home for a battered-up Great Redeemer. The Derby embarrassment became a useful show and fox-hunting horse.

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Drysdale, who won the 2000 Kentucky Derby with Fusaichi Pegasus, might be making a return trip to Churchill Downs. Drysdale’s Japanese-bred son of Forty Niner, Sunday Break, won by two lengths Friday at Santa Anita in his first try around two turns and is headed for stakes competition next.... Edgar Prado has replaced Tony D’Amico as the rider of Harlan’s Holiday for the Florida Derby. D’Amico will keep the mount on Repent, trainer Ken McPeek’s other Kentucky Derby prospect.