Hollywood Story Yields Happy Endings

This was a true Hollywood finish: The race was the Hollywood Starlet, the track was Hollywood Park, the horse was Hollywood Story, and the jockey was straight from Screenwriting 101 -- in which you send the hero up the tree in the first act and safely bring him down in the second.

Pat Valenzuela didn’t have to be set up for the punch line. “What a Hollywood story, huh guys?” Valenzuela volunteered after winning Sunday’s $349,500 Starlet on closing day.

The equine Hollywood Story, a 2-year-old filly who was winless in four previous starts, won by 2 3/4 lengths and, just in time for Santa, gift-wrapped the Hollywood Park season for Valenzuela, who swept the five meets at Southern California’s three major tracks in 2003. Since the racing calendar was first dissected into a five-meet year, in 1981, only one jockey before Valenzuela -- Chris McCarron in 1983 -- had run the table.

“It’s a tremendous feeling,” said Valenzuela, who reinvented himself for the umpteenth time two years ago, after another drug-related interruption to an otherwise distinguished career. “It’s just unbelievable the way things have gone. At Santa Anita last winter, who would have thought that this could have happened?”

Valenzuela, 41, fought through suspensions from the stewards, and even a recent flu bug, to win the winter meet at Santa Anita; the spring-summer meet at Hollywood Park; the Del Mar meet; the Oak Tree at Santa Anita meet; and now the second Hollywood meet. He still owes the stewards 13 backed-up suspension days, and, except for a few stakes races, won’t ride regularly at the upcoming Santa Anita meet until Jan. 11.

This is the way Valenzuela’s year went:

* He led the Santa Anita meet for the first time, winning 94 races, the most by a riding champion there in eight years. David Flores finished second with 69 wins.

* He won his third riding title at Hollywood Park’s main meet with 81 wins. Victor Espinoza was closest with 69 wins.

* In a tight Del Mar race with Julie Krone, Valenzuela prevailed, 52-49. Valenzuela had won three previous Del Mar titles, but none since 1991.

* During an Oak Tree meet in which he won his seventh Breeders’ Cup race, with Adoration in the Distaff, Valenzuela nipped Tyler Baze, 34-33. Valenzuela’s only previous Oak Tree title came in 1988, the year before he won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness with Sunday Silence.

* By winning Sunday’s eighth, the race before the Starlet, Valenzuela was assured of holding off a late charge by Espinoza, who finished three short with 24 wins. Krone, who led the standings when she cracked two ribs in a spill Dec. 12, missed the last seven days of the meet and finished with 23 wins, the same as Baze.

“I’m a blessed man, and I’ve got a lot of people to thank,” said Valenzuela, who in an earlier TVG interview even thanked the stewards. “It all starts with my wife, Valerie, who’s my rock and my backbone. Then there’s the support of my kids, and my agent Nick Cosato, and the Winners Foundation, which has helped me put my life back together. It gives you a great amount of satisfaction to be able to do what I’ve accomplished on a daily basis.”

It’s ironic that Valenzuela’s 27th win of the Hollywood meet came after the stewards didn’t disqualify his mount. They conducted an inquiry into the stretch run, involving Hollywood Story and House Of Fortune, the third-place finisher, and quickly left the original finish untouched.

“I didn’t think there was anything there,” Valenzuela said. “It was more [jockey Alex Solis, aboard House Of Fortune] coming up on my [horse’s] heels than anything else.”

Rahy Dolly finished second, 4 1/2 lengths ahead of House Of Fortune. Victory U.S.A., the 9-10 favorite, finished fourth, beaten by more than 11 lengths. Hollywood Story, running 1 1/16 miles in 1:42 4/5, paid $14.60 to win.

“I just rode her the way I got told [by trainer Bob Baffert] to ride her,” said Flores, who took over for the injured Krone on Victory U.S.A. “I don’t think that worked out. I was trying to get her to relax, but it was too late. We went with Plan A, and it didn’t work out.”

Hollywood Story, trained by John Shirreffs for owner George Krikorian, had a rough trip when she was a badly beaten fourth in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies. She hadn’t come close to breaking her maiden in three other starts, but had been quickly seasoned while trying to topple the undefeated Halfbridled in the Del Mar Debutante and the Oak Leaf.

Hollywood Story, last in the six-horse field, trailed by more than eight lengths after a quarter of a mile. But that was before her jockey pushed the button.

“She ran a great race,” Valenzuela said.

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Jeff Mullins won the training title with 13 wins, two more than Bobby Frankel and Doug O’Neill.... On-track betting at the 30-day meet averaged $1.3 million, a drop of 7% from last year. All betting averaged almost $9 million and was down 1.3%. The on-track attendance average of 6,516 was down about 1%.... Mike Smith won six races the last two days of the meet.... Shake You Down was a 2 1/4-length winner of the $100,000 Gravesend Handicap at Aqueduct.