Bailey Goes the Distance to Win With Composure

The commuter jockey, Jerry Bailey, was on another red-eye flight out of LAX on Sunday night. Bailey kept flying into Los Angeles this weekend until he got it right.

A record six-time Eclipse Award winner, the 45-year-old Bailey might be based in Florida this winter, but he’ll go anywhere to ride a good horse.

Bailey arrived at Santa Anita on Friday to ride Empire Maker, a possible Kentucky Derby horse, in the Sham Stakes, and after a second-place finish he returned to Gulfstream, where he won Saturday’s Sabin Handicap with Allamerican Bertie.

Back at Santa Anita on Sunday, Bailey and his 3-year-old filly, Composure, recovered from a poor start to score a narrow win over Elloluv in the $200,000 Las Virgenes Stakes.

As long as high-powered trainers Bob Baffert and Bobby Frankel keep putting Bailey on their stock, his bag is packed.

Bailey, who leads the country with more than $1.7 million in purses, has made five trips from Florida to California this Santa Anita season, and won six races -- five stakes -- out of 21 mounts.

“If I ever added up how many miles I fly, I might not do it,” Bailey said. “Besides all the places I fly to for races, like California and Dubai, I also go home [Long Island, N.Y.] on Gulfstream’s dark days to be with my wife and son, who’s in school there.”

It helps that Bailey, who was elected to the Racing Hall of Fame in 1995, finds flying easy.

“I’m asleep before they finish loading the plane,” he said.

He had no time to nap during the Las Virgenes, which he also won last year with You. Only two other jockeys, Gary Stevens and Laffit Pincay, have won the stake in consecutive years.

Out of the gate, Composure stumbled badly.

“The ground broke out from under her, front and back,” Bailey said.

“After that, I tried to put her in the best spot I could.”

Composure, owned by Bob and Beverly Lewis, was in third place after three-quarters of a mile, less than two lengths behind Elloluv and Watching You. In the stretch, with Elloluv as the target, Bailey moved Composure off the rail and they closed from off Elloluv’s right flank to win by a neck. Watching You finished third.

Running a mile in 1:36, favored Composure paid $3.60 for her third win, along with three seconds, in seven starts.

In her first six races, Composure was ridden by Mike Smith, but Baffert hired Bailey after second-place finishes in the Hollywood Starlet and the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies.

Baffert had three victories on Sunday’s card and has a meet-high 21 victories after 35 days.

“My filly gave away three lengths at the break,” Bailey said. “She breaks so hard that the ground gives out from under her. She had a lot to overcome--the bad break and my altering course in the stretch. She showed great courage to get up and win like that.”

Elloluv, whose three-race win streak ended, had beaten Composure by four lengths in the Hollywood Starlet.

Composure, with 120 pounds Sunday, had a two-pound edge in the weights.

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Trainer Mark Shuman and his owner, Mike Gill, have been a one-barn powerhouse at Gulfstream Park this season, over the inevitable backstretch grumbling that they might not be playing the game on the square. Shuman’s answer to the innuendos is to keep showing up in the winner’s circle, as he did Sunday after saddling Native Heir for a 4 1/2-length win in the $100,000 Deputy Minister Handicap.

Ridden by Cornelio Velasquez, Native Heir ran 6 1/2 furlongs in 1:15, tying the track record. He paid $20.80 for $2.

Shuman has been furiously claiming horses, and winning with them soon afterward, but Native Heir, a 5-year-old gelding, had been winless in four starts after the trainer and Gill claimed him for $50,000 off trainer Tony Dutrow at Delaware Park in September.

“This horse used to be a stakes horse, and that’s why we claimed him off Dutrow,” Shuman said. “Dutrow took a shot and lost him.”

Since Gulfstream opened on Jan. 3, Shuman has won with 31% of his starters. Two wins Sunday boosted his total to 37. He holds a 27-win lead over the second-place trainer, and has more wins than the combined total of the four trainers who are immediately behind him. The Gulfstream meet doesn’t end until April 24, and already Shuman is within two wins of the track record of 39, set by Bill Mott in 1996.

Meantime, Gill, who runs a mortgage business in New Hampshire, keeps pouring money into the game. At a Florida auction of 2-year-olds last week, he spent $2.9 million to buy 32 horses, which was 27% of the lots that were sold.