Pleasantly Perfect Now a Big Target

A horse can lose one race and his fan club will go to Hades. “He’s a favorite to take a swing against,” wrote Mike Watchmaker about Pleasantly Perfect in the Daily Racing Form. “Pleasantly Perfect: A Favorite Full of Flaws,” reads a headline over a piece by Brad Free, one of Watchmaker’s colleagues.

Pleasantly Perfect won four consecutive races, among them the Breeders’ Cup Classic and the Dubai World Cup, and he has earned $6.7 million, more than the other seven horses combined in Sunday’s $1-million Pacific Classic, but that streak ended three weeks ago when Choctaw Nation, once a $40,000 claimer and another contender Sunday, defeated him in the San Diego Handicap here. At 6-5, some say, Pleasantly Perfect is ripe to be the 13th favorite to fall in the 14 runnings of the Del Mar stake.

The San Diego Handicap was Pleasantly Perfect’s first start in four months, but Richard Mandella, the 6-year-old’s trainer, blames himself more than the layoff for the three-quarter-length loss.

“I put too much speed into him last time, and he took me seriously,” the puckish Mandella said. “Since then, I’ve had three offers to work at Los Alamitos.”

Under Mike Smith, who rode in place of the injured Alex Solis, Pleasantly Perfect was an uncharacteristic pace-setter against Choctaw Nation. Mandella’s horse had a 1 1/2 -length lead an eighth of a mile from the wire, before Choctaw ran him down.

Jerry Bailey will interrupt his Saratoga campaign to ride Pleasantly Perfect for the first time, and also has agreed to ride for Mandella in this year’s Breeders’ Cup. Smith switches to Total Impact, who’s 6-1 off their win together in the Hollywood Gold Cup.

“Jerry’s won [seven] Eclipse Awards,” Mandella said. “I’m not a very smart guy, but it didn’t take much to figure this out.”

Bailey has been second with both of his Pacific Classic mounts -- Medaglia d’Oro last year and Cigar in 1996. Bailey has second-guessed himself about the Cigar ride, which ended the horse’s 16-race win streak as the Mandella-trained Dare And Go won at 39-1.

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Roy Wood, executive director of the California Horse Racing Board, will retire at the end of the year. Wood, 60, will become associated with the Foxwood Plantation farm in Louisiana. He has been with the racing board since 1994. ... Sense of Style, trained by Patrick Biancone and ridden by Edgar Prado, beat Miss Matched by 6 3/4 lengths to win the $250,000 Spinaway at Saratoga. Classic Elegance, the Schuylerville winner, finished last.