Sky Jack, Came Home Might Head East

The big winners Sunday at Hollywood Park--Sky Jack in the Hollywood Gold Cup and Came Home in the Swaps--might run their next races outside California.

Sky Jack, a 6-year-old gelding who has run only 14 times, all at California tracks, is not likely to surface at Del Mar, trainer Doug O’Neill said. The San Diego Handicap, on Aug. 4, fits Sky Jack as far as the 1 1/16-mile distance, but O’Neill doesn’t relish facing Mizzen Mast, who’s expected to run.

Del Mar’s richest race, the $1-million Pacific Classic on Aug. 25, is 1 1/4 miles, which might be too far for Sky Jack even though it’s the same distance as the Gold Cup. Sky Jack barely held on Sunday to defeat Momentum by a nose. Another consideration for O’Neill is that his wife, Linette, is expected to deliver their first child around the same time as the Classic.

A race under consideration is the $500,000 Woodward, at 1 1/8 miles, at Belmont Park on Sept. 7. O’Neill is more certain about Sky Jack’s long-range goal, the 1 1/8-mile California Cup Classic at Santa Anita in October. In 2000, Sky Jack won the Cal Cup race, his first stakes victory in his ninth start.

Sky Jack is not eligible for the $4-million Breeders’ Cup Classic, to be run at Arlington Park on Oct. 26, and it would cost his owners, Rene and Margie Lambert, $360,000 to supplement him. “We’d be crazy to do that,” O’Neill said. The Classic is a 1 1/4-mile race.

Unlike Sky Jack, Came Home has run outside California, though not well the last two times. He was sixth in this year’s Kentucky Derby, and seventh in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Belmont Park in 2001. Before that, he won the Hopeful at Saratoga. Came Home is undefeated in California--the Swaps was his fourth in a row at Hollywood Park and his Santa Anita Derby win, in April, was his third in a row there.

“We’ll have to take a look at the Haskell,” Came Home’s co-owner, John Toffan, said after the Swaps. The Haskell Handicap, a $1-million race at Monmouth Park on Aug. 4, is at 1 1/8 miles, the same distance as the Santa Anita Derby and the Swaps. But War Emblem, who beat Came Home by more than 10 lengths in the Kentucky Derby, is headed for the Haskell.

Free House, the last Swaps winner raced by Toffan and his partner, Trudy McCaffery, traveled to New Jersey three weeks later in 1997 and finished third, behind Touch Gold and Anet, in the Haskell.

“Whatever we do, we’re going to have to go east,” Toffan said. Del Mar’s series for 3-year-olds, which concludes with the Del Mar Derby on Sept. 7, is on grass, a surface Came Home has never tried. The earliest Saratoga races for 3-year-olds are the $500,000 Jim Dandy, the same day as the Haskell, and the $1-million Travers on Aug. 24. Paco Gonzalez, who trains Came Home, mentioned Saratoga’s $200,000 King’s Bishop, the same day as the Travers, but that would require moving the colt back from nine to seven furlongs.

None of the Eastern races for 3-year-olds is expected to have a large field. Saturday’s $300,000 Ohio Derby has only five horses. Some of the best horses in the division will not be immediate factors: the injured Sarava, the Belmont winner, is out for the year, as is Proud Citizen, who recently had leg surgery. Buddha, who’s had a series of problems since winning the Wood Memorial, and Harlan’s Holiday won’t return until the fall. Monmouth Park lists only six possibles for the Haskell, one of them Came Home. Of the others, the top challengers for War Emblem are Medaglia d’Oro and Sunday Break.