Skipaslew Will Try to Pull a Surprise in Strub

At 79, Merv Griffin hasn’t forgotten how to poke his own ribs, while mining a few laughs from the rest of the room.

“Where am I?” Griffin said last month at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

For the Eclipse awards dinner, he was in the house of a rival, down the street from the hotel he owns in Beverly Hills.

“It’s a tough game,” Griffin said before presenting one of the awards. “But I want you to know that my stable won 16 races last year. Yes, 16 races. Isn’t that something? But of course, we ran in 2,000 races to do that.”

The 2,000 part is a huge exaggeration, but what is known is that Skipaslew, one of five Griffin horses in the care of trainer Doug O’Neill, ran seven times and won once in 2004. The 4-year-old colt is 15-1 on the morning line for today’s $300,000 Strub Stakes, but Griffin’s hole card is O’Neill, who’s the runaway leader at the Santa Anita meet, with 24 victories, and a conditioner who knows how to pull off an upset in a big race. Fleetstreet Dancer was 48-1 when he won the $2-million Japan Cup Dirt for O’Neill in 2003.

Anything from Skipaslew from here on out is a bonus for Griffin and O’Neill, who claimed the grandson of Seattle Slew from trainer Bill Currin for $50,000 at Hollywood Park in July 2003. Since then, Skipaslew has won four of 13 starts, one of them the Golden Gate Derby about a year ago, and earned more than $200,000.

The victory at Golden Gate Fields had O’Neill thinking about the Kentucky Derby, but Skipaslew blew a trip to Churchill Downs by running seventh and fifth in his next two races. By the end of the year, he ran in five Derbies at four tracks in three states. The only one he won was at Golden Gate.

“He had run poorly in his first career start,” O’Neill said. “The day we claimed him, he was a good physical specimen, and it looked like they were running in the race for a confidence builder, hoping they could sneak him by [the claim box]. He’s not a very big horse, barely 15 hands [five feet] tall. But he tries hard. He’s got a big heart, and runs like a horse who’s got a bigger body than what he was given.”

Skipaslew ran third on Jan. 15 in the San Fernando. Neither of the horses ahead of him, Minister Eric and Mass Media, is running in the 58th Strub. Minister Eric’s trainer, Richard Mandella, will saddle Rock Hard Ten, who’s the 7-5 morning-line favorite off his seven-furlong victory in the Malibu on Dec. 26.

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In California and Florida, some Kentucky Derby contenders will vie for attention today. At Santa Anita, the Sham Stakes includes Iced Out, also from the O’Neill barn; Giacomo, who was second in the Hollywood Futurity; and Chekhov, a two-race maiden who was purchased for $3.3 million last year. The long and short of the Gulfstream Park opportunities are the 1 1/8 -mile Holy Bull and the 7 1/2 -furlong Hutcheson. Trainer Shug McGaughey, who has shipped in Good Reward for the Strub, has the well-bred Defer running in the Hutcheson. The Holy Bull has drawn High Fly, who’s undefeated in three starts.