Lava Man and Surf Cat Can Do Only So Much

Those wins by Lava Man and Surf Cat on Saturday at Hollywood Park were needed tonic for the horse racing game, which is trying to recover from the mid-year blahs and gear up for the Breeders’ Cup that will cap the season in October.

The retirement of Ghostzapper, last year’s horse of the year, and the announcement that Giacomo, the Kentucky Derby winner, probably won’t run again in 2005 left deep holes in a sport that can ill afford wholesale defections. Even in the best of times, the ranks of the leaders are perilously thin. Quite simply, this year there have not been enough Afleet Alexes to go around.

The impressive wins by Lava Man in the Hollywood Gold Cup and Surf Cat in the Swaps were tempered by the fact that both horses are ineligible for the Breeders’ Cup, not having been nominated before they went into training.

Horses can always be supplemented into Breeders’ Cup races, but the fees are steep and, in Lava Man’s case, it would cost a prohibitive $800,000 for him to run in the $4-million Breeders’ Cup Classic on Oct. 29 at Belmont Park.

The winner’s share of the Classic is more than $2 million, but reaping less than 4-1 on an investment is not any horse owner’s idea of a legitimate risk.

Should Lava Man continue to excel -- his next start probably will be the $1-million Pacific Classic on Aug. 21 at Del Mar -- racing could be in the embarrassing position of not having one of its stars around for its showcase day.

“The supplement is a lot of money for any horse,” said Doug O’Neill, who trains Lava Man, “but this horse is a gelding, and anything he does on the track doesn’t translate into added value as a stallion. That makes it even harder to think about supplementing for the Breeders’ Cup.”

Indicative of the frailty of the game is that Lava Man and Surf Cat, virtually off single wins, have catapulted into national prominence. Two months ago, Lava Man, claimed by O’Neill last year for $50,000, could have been claimed again for $100,000. Surf Cat, who had never won a stake before the Swaps, didn’t run in the Triple Crown series, but already has vaulted ahead of many horses who did.

Typically, the Triple Crown -- in a five-week window, three races run at different tracks at punishing distances -- was not kind to many of the participants. Giacomo paid the price for running in all three. Afleet Alex was the exception. Winner of the Preakness and Belmont Stakes after finishing third in the Kentucky Derby, he got a month’s rest, but now he’s focusing on the Haskell on Aug. 7 at Monmouth Park in Oceanport, N.J. and the Travers at Saratoga three weeks later.

Bellamy Road, the George Steinbrenner-owned Derby favorite who finished seventh at Churchill Downs, was thought to be a contender for the Travers, but now it appears that the New York race will come up too soon for the colt to attempt his comeback.

Luminaries in the 3-year-old division are so hard to come by that the No. 2 horse is an undefeated colt who probably will never face Afleet Alex. He is Lost In The Fog, who has won eight in a row, six of them this year.

Lost In the Fog has never run farther than seven furlongs, and doesn’t have to. His winning margins have ranged from 1 1/4 to 14 3/4 lengths, and his average win has come by nearly seven lengths. Greg Gilchrist, who trains Lost In the Fog at Golden Gate Fields in Albany, Calif., is not eyeing any two-turn races for his horse. A Breeders’ Cup Sprint win, and an Eclipse Award, would suit Gilchrist and Harry Aleo, Lost In The Fog’s owner, just fine.

But even the sprint division is not attrition-proof. Egg Head, a colt who gave Lost In The Fog his toughest battle, in the Riva Ridge on Belmont Stakes day, was euthanized Monday after suffering from a circulatory hoof condition. Richard Migliore, who rode Egg Head in the Riva Ridge, had predicted a bright future for the horse.

Another horse who ran on Belmont Stakes day, Funny Cide, was embraced by the sport when he won the Derby and Preakness in 2003. Funny Cide is a gelding, a horse who wouldn’t be hustled off to stud duty in some sort of lucrative syndication deal, and the game envisioned him pumping up stake after stake for years to come. But Funny Cide has struggled to win since the Triple Crown. He won last year’s Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont, beating an ordinary field, but he was beaten in seven of nine starts the rest of the year and is winless this year. A latter-day John Henry he’s not.

If Lava Man doesn’t develop into a successor to Ghostzapper in the older-male division, honors might be scooped up by Saint Liam or Roses In May. Saint Liam still has much to prove. He won the Stephen Foster Handicap at Churchill Downs last month but must do more to rub out the memory of his inexplicably abysmal outing when he was shipped to California to run in the Santa Anita Handicap in March. On his best day, Saint Liam is formidable; he was the horse who came closest to beating the undefeated Ghostzapper last year.

Roses In May, a feeble second to Ghostzapper in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic, is emerging from the Dubai Syndrome. Because of the travel demands, U.S. horses that run in the Dubai World Cup are not known to rebound quickly, and frequently never regain their form. Roses In May, winner of the $6-million race in March, is only now approaching his first workout since then. He could run twice before October’s Classic.

With $5.4 million in purses, Roses In May has the highest earnings total of any horse out there, but until further notice, he’s still off the radar.