Tanaka Tops the List at Finding a Bargain

Gary Tanaka, the London-based investment executive, has been buying racehorses since 1993, but don’t look for him at one of those high-priced Kentucky auctions, bidding against Middle East petrodollars or American plutocrats for well-bred bloodstock.

“I’ve never bought a horse at auction,” Tanaka said. “Half the horses sold that way never win a race, and of the other half you’re lucky if they win anything more than a maiden race.”

Tanaka mainly shops for horses who have already run in Europe, where they’ve established a semblance of form and where prices don’t push the roof.

“The purses are much lower in Europe than they are in the U.S.,” the 59-year-old Tanaka said. “I hate to say it, but the purses are pathetic over there. But as a result, the horses don’t cost as much, either. You get more bang for your buck.”

Tanaka’s buying strategy works. His stable earned $4.4 million last year to finish seventh nationally, and this year, with $2.5 million in purses, he’s No. 10 on the list. Tanaka’s 2002 total could mushroom this weekend at Santa Anita, where he runs Golden Apples on Saturday in the $500,000 Yellow Ribbon and Sarafan on Sunday in the $300,000 Clement L. Hirsch Memorial Turf Championship.

Golden Apples is a 4-year-old Irish-bred filly who won the Del Mar Oaks last year, in her first start for Tanaka after four races in Ireland. This year, Golden Apples has earned $640,000 in four starts. She has bookend wins in the Santa Ana Handicap at Santa Anita and the Beverly D. at Arlington Park around second-place finishes in the Santa Ana Handicap and the John Mabee Ramona Handicap at Del Mar.

Rain last weekend makes Golden Apples’ assignment especially difficult in the Yellow Ribbon, a race Tanaka won with Donna Viola in 1996. Banks Hill, last year’s Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf winner at Belmont Park, was to have run in last Saturday’s Flower Bowl there, but when the course came up soft, trainer Andre Fabre shipped her across the country for the Yellow Ribbon. Banks Hill has won only one of four starts since her Breeders’ Cup win, but she has been butting heads with males in France and England, and at the end of her last start, at Longchamp, she was only half a length behind Rock of Gibraltar, probably the best miler in training.

This is the field for the 1 1/4-mile Yellow Ribbon, with jockeys in post-position order: Noches De Rosa, Alex Solis; Nepenthe, Mike Smith; Golden Apples, Pat Valenzuela; Voodoo Dancer, Gary Stevens; Banks Hill, Corey Nakatani; and Viernes, Jose Valdivia. Valenzuela, who rode Golden Apples for the first time in the Beverly D., had three winners Thursday at Santa Anita.

It will be raining Breeders’ Cup preps at Santa Anita, Belmont and Keeneland this weekend, and besides the Yellow Ribbon, the rest of the card Saturday in Arcadia includes the $200,000 Norfolk for 2-year-olds; the $200,000 Ancient Title Handicap for sprinters and the $250,000 Oak Tree Mile for grass horses.

Keeneland’s heavy-duty weekend kicks off today with the $500,000 WinStar Galaxy and the $400,000 Alcibiades. Affluent, a Santa Anita shipper and the filly who beat Golden Apples in the Ramona, is running in the Galaxy.

The Thoroughbred Corp.’s Atlantic Ocean, one of the contenders for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Arlington on Oct. 26 and winner of the Kentucky Cup Juvenile Fillies in her last start, will face eight rivals in the Alcibiades.

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Summer Wind Dancer is expected to run in the California Cup Juvenile Fillies on Nov. 2 after her three-quarter-length win Thursday in the $81,795 Cover Gal Stakes at Santa Anita. The 2-year-old filly, winning her first stake, had run twice at Del Mar, beating maidens and finishing third in a sprint stake.... Robert Mikols, the 63-year-old Long Island, N.Y., crane operator who struck trainer Marjorie Cordero with his car in a hit-and-run incident early last year, has pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of a fatal accident. Mikols is expected to be sentenced to six months in jail and five years’ probation. Cordero, who was 41, was the wife of Hall of Fame jockey Angel Cordero.