NOTEBOOK : Major Obstacle to Breeders’ Cup Returning to Santa Anita Removed

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The major obstacle that might have prevented Santa Anita from getting the Breeders’ Cup in 1992 has been eliminated.

California horsemen, unwilling to give up lucrative purse money from off-track betting the first three times the Breeders’ Cup was held on the West Coast, have agreed in principle to forgo their share if the races are run at Santa Anita in 1992.

When the Breeders’ Cup was run in California--at Hollywood Park in 1984 and 1987 and at Santa Anita in 1986--the local horsemen gave the Breeders’ Cup a flat fee of $100,000 each year and kept their share of the off-track betting handle.

When the races were held elsewhere--at Aqueduct in 1985, at Churchill Downs in 1988 and at Gulfstream Park last year--horsemen from those tracks waived their share of off-track betting. Last year, the Breeders’ Cup received $1.8 million from satellite betting at 149 off-track sites after Florida horsemen gave up their cut.

The Breeders’ Cup returns to New York in November at Belmont Park, and the races will be back at Churchill Downs next year.

Although Santa Anita appears to be a cinch to get the Breeders’ Cup in 1992, Breeders’ Cup officials reportedly are irked that they have been unable to sign a contract.

Ted Bassett, the president of the Breeders’ Cup, declined to comment on why a deal hasn’t been struck.

But another Breeders’ Cup official said: “We put the contract together with Churchill Downs in four weeks, and the negotiations with Gulfstream Park took six weeks. We’ve been talking with Oak Tree (the association that leases Santa Anita and would be the Breeders’ Cup host) since December, but we still don’t have anything.”

Ray Rogers, the general manager for Oak Tree, said: “(Negotiations have been) moving along. I know we’ve been running behind the deadline that the Breeders’ Cup set, but we’re getting there.”

Besides the seven races worth $10 million on Breeders’ Cup day, the Breeders’ Cup also sponsors a stakes program throughout the year that takes in about 75 tracks. There are more than 130 races worth about $6.6 million

Two of the best jockeys in the country didn’t pick up mounts in the Kentucky Derby until this week.

Laffit Pincay will ride Pendleton Ridge, winless in his only three races, and Jose Santos has the assignment on Country Day a week from Saturday at Churchill Downs.

In the Wood Memorial last Saturday at Aqueduct, Pendleton Ridge ran fourth and Country Day finished sixth.

Pincay, who is having an off year, partly because he suffered a broken collarbone while driving a harness horse in an exhibition race at Los Alamitos, has ridden in every Derby since 1979. He has won the race once--with Swale in 1984--in 16 tries. Only two jockeys have ridden more Derbies, Bill Shoemaker winning four in 26 tries, and Eddie Arcaro going five for 21.

Although Santos has led the country in purses the last four years, he has ridden in the Derby only twice, finishing fourth with Cryptoclearance in 1987 and running ninth with Triple Buck last year.

Neither jockey has ridden his Derby mount before. Richard Migliore rode Pendleton Ridge in the Wood, trainer Bobby Frankel saying that several California jockeys didn’t want to travel to New York for the assignment. Country Day was ridden in the Wood by Angel Cordero, who is committed to Land Rush in the Derby.

Trainers with multiple entries in the Derby are Frankel, who has Pendleton Ridge and Burnt Hills, and Wayne Lukas, who will saddle Land Rush and Real Cash.

Neither pair is expected to be coupled in the betting. In Kentucky races worth more than $100,000, horsemen can appeal to the racing commission to have their horses run separately. The commission is expected to allow these four horses to be bet separately in the Derby.

Pendleton Ridge is trying to become the fourth horse to make the Derby his first victory. The others were Buchanan in 1884, Sir Barton in 1919 and Brokers Tip in 1933.

Sir Barton also won the Preakness and Belmont, becoming the first of 11 horses to sweep the Triple Crown.

Brokers Tip survived that rugged Derby stretch duel with Head Play, in which the jockeys were pulling at one another’s saddles. The stewards couldn’t determine who was more guilty, so they allowed the result to stand. Don Meade rode Brokers Tip and Herb Fisher was aboard Head Play.

The last nonwinner to run in the Derby was Great Redeemer, who finished last in 1979.

Saturday’s $75,000 Derby Trial, which highlights the opening of the season at Churchill Downs, ought to be called the Non-Derby Trial, because none of the seven horses entered is expected to come back in the Derby.

Nevertheless, the mile race is fascinating because of the presence of Housebuster, the brilliant sprinter who beat both Summer Squall and Thirty Six Red, two of the Derby favorites, in the Swale Stakes at Gulfstream Park earlier in the year. Housebuster’s trainer, Jimmy Croll, recognizes the distance limitations of his colt and has no plans to run in the 1 1/4 -mile Derby.

Others running in the Trial are Five on Five, Spiced Coffee, Bates Castle, Falling Sky, Blue Royal and Private School.

Louisville has been flirting with record heat all week, with temperatures in the 80s, but there has been little humidity. Rain is forecast for opening day Saturday, with the long-range forecast all next week calling for dry, warm weather.

Horse Racing Notes

Wayne Lukas, who will continue to train Open Mind when she races for a new owner this year, plans a four-month campaign concluding with the Breeders’ Cup Distaff in November. Open Mind, the champion 2-year-old filly in 1988 and third behind Bayakoa and Gorgeous in last year’s Distaff, won’t resume serious training until July. She was bought for $4.6 million by Kazuo Makamura, a prominent Japanese breeder, at the Gene Klein dispersal sale last November.

Lukas is resisting suggestions from Calumet Farm that he run Power Lunch in the Derby. Power Lunch, third in the Arkansas Derby and fourth in the Jim Beam, is a slightly built colt who has one win in eight starts. . . . John Forsythe, a close friend of Laz Barrera, the trainer of Mister Frisky, will be in Louisville during Derby week and is the grand marshal at the Pegasus Parade. Asked what he liked best about Barrera, Forsythe said: “The fact that I can’t understand him.”

Randy Romero, the leading jockey at the Keeneland meeting that ends today, has dropped his appeal of a five-day suspension by the stewards there. The hearing on the appeal would have been Monday, and had Romero lost, his suspension would have started immediately, costing him the mount aboard favored Go for Wand a week from today in the Kentucky Oaks at Churchill Downs. Romero’s suspension starts Saturday and runs through next Wednesday.

The Thoroughbred Record, in business for 115 years, went out of business this week because of economic difficulties. Published in Lexington, Ky., the Record cut back from a weekly to a monthly in 1986.