Horse Racing : Too Many Races With Too Little Competition--It’s a Big Problem

Lost Code and Cutlass Reality, two horses with a present and a future, and Precisionist, a horse with a glorious past and who knows what else, will all be racing this Saturday. The trouble for racing is, they will be at different tracks. A stakes schedule divided against itself cannot fill the stands.

In Detroit, Lost Code, winner in 5 of 6 starts this year and probably the best older horse in training, will face a small field in the $300,000 Michigan Mile. (Question: How far is the Michigan Mile? Answer: 1 1/8 miles.)

At Hollywood Park, Cutlass Reality, winner of the Californian and the Hollywood Gold Cup in his last two starts, will possibly have only two opponents in the $150,000 Bel Air Handicap.

At Belmont Park, where only 15,000 people attended the races last Saturday, Precisionist, who hasn’t won since 1986, makes his second start since then, running in the $100,000 Tom Fool.

What a race the three of them could have made: The two hot handicap horses against the erstwhile champion. Instead, many bettors in Detroit and at Hollywood Park will be staying away from the windows because Lost Code and Cutlass Reality will offer little value as odds-on favorites.

Detroit Race Course came close to having both Lost Code and Cutlass Reality. Hollywood Park had been hopeful that Precisionist would stay home to meet Cutlass Reality. Instead, no one wins--even the horses, because their victories will be against lackluster fields.

Hollywood Park has been struggling to provide bettable fields for its stakes races all summer. Four times, the track has run major stakes with fields of only three or four horses.

“Why?” Hollywood Park General Manager Don Robbins said the other day. “Mrs. (Marje) Everett (the track’s chief operating officer) asked me the same thing two hours ago, and she’ll probably ask me the same thing tomorrow.

“One of the answers is, there’s a finite number of really good horses. And they’ve got a wide choice of stakes around the country to run in. On the other hand, there’s an infinite number of the other kind, the ones that run for $32,000 claiming prices.”

A break in weights was responsible for Precisionist going to Belmont. And racing’s inconsistent medication rules are partly to blame for Lost Code not running in New York and Cutlass Reality not being shipped to Michigan.

Had Precisionist run in the Bel Air, he would have carried 122 pounds, 2 more than Cutlass Reality. In the Tom Fool, a race in which weights are based on recent performances, Precisionist will carry only 119 pounds, and have a 9-pound weight advantage over the favored Gulch.

“It’s not easy to weight horses,” said John Russell, Precisionist’s trainer. “Do you weight my horse off what he did in the past, or what he’s done this year (an aborted start in which he dumped jockey Chris McCarron leaving the gate)? I think that the only thing horsemen agree on is that everybody else is crazy.”

Lost Code and Cutlass Reality have the reputation of being Lasix glories, horses with bleeding problems who suddenly became formidable after they were treated with the anti-bleeding diuretic.

Lost Code had won only 2 of his first 9 races, and his handlers didn’t think enough of him to nominate the colt for last year’s Triple Crown series. Since being treated with Lasix, Lost Code has had 12 wins, 3 seconds and 2 thirds in in 17 starts.

Cutlass Reality--7 for 55 lifetime--bled in a race at Golden Gate Fields in May and with Lasix has won 3 of his last 4, beating Alysheba and Ferdinand at Hollywood Park.

To run in New York, Lost Code wouldn’t be able to use Lasix, because state rules require that horses race without medication. Cutlass Reality wouldn’t have been able to run with Lasix in Michigan, because the rule there says that a visiting horse isn’t a bleeder unless a state veterinarian in another state actually sees a horse bleed from the nostrils or through an endoscopic examination, or unless two independent veterinarians certify the horse as a bleeder.

Under these rules, Lost Code will run with Lasix in the Michigan Mile, but Cutlass Reality wouldn’t have been able to. Desert Wine became the cause celeb in the 1983 Preakness over a similar conflict between California and Maryland medication rules. The day before the race, a Baltimore judge permitted Desert Wine to run--he finished second--with Lasix, and the Maryland rule was changed. The Michigan rule is being changed, too. But not in time for fans there to see Lost Code battling Cutlass Reality.

John Clements has gone from a trainer of about 25 horses at the Northern California tracks and fairs to the trainer of 1 quarter horse (2, if you count a recently arrived filly) at Los Alamitos.

Clements likes Sig Hanson so much that he has turned over his main string to two assistants while he personally supervises the conditioning of the 2-year-old colt, who’s one of the qualifying winners running Saturday night in the Dash for Cash Futurity.

“It’s very unusual that I’d leave the rest of my horses, but I’ve liked this colt a lot since I saw him in his second workout,” Clements said. “I want to stay as close to him as I can.”

Sig Hanson has made only two starts, winning by 1 1/2 lengths at Los Alamitos on May 19 and then winning his Futurity trial by a neck last week.

Between races, Sig Hanson almost died, coming down with a virus that had veterinarians worried for 10 days.

“So far, I’ve been right about this colt,” Clements said. Another horseman who believes in Sig Hanson is Kenny Hart, who’ll ride him Saturday night. Hart rode 3 of the 7 winners in the Trials, including Especially Angelic, who like Sig Hanson had never been ridden by any jockey other than Hart. With Hart aboard Sig Hanson, Roman Figueroa will ride Especially Angelic.

Horse Racing Notes

Lost Code, carrying 128 pounds, will give away between 12 and 21 pounds to his rivals in the Michigan Mile. . . . Ladbroke Racing Corp., the English-based company that owns Detroit Race Course, has been looking at California racing properties in recent years and is expected to close a deal soon for the purchase of Golden Gate Fields. . . . Music Merci, a 2-year-old gray gelding who’s 2 for 2, has a salt-and-pepper head that looks like the face of Winning Colors, the filly who won the Kentucky Derby. . . . Trainer Wayne Lukas is predicting that his 2-year-old colts will be better than his usually stronger 2-year-old fillies this year. . . . Jockey Eddie Delahoussaye, getting in the last word on his dispute with Risen Star’s owner-trainer, Louie Roussel, over a $100,000 Triple Crown bonus: “The jockeys are talking about having their bonuses written into the standard riding contract, but the trainers should be concerned about protecting themselves, too. If Louie hadn’t been his own trainer, I’m sure that he wouldn’t have offered the trainer 10% of the ($1-million) bonus, either.” . . . It was surely coincidental, but how about the juxtaposition of the running of Saturday’s Tom Fool and the announcement this week by Greentree Stud that its 600-acre Kentucky farm is on the market? One of the great Greentree runners was Tom Fool, the 1953 Horse of the Year and one of only four horses to sweep Belmont Park’s Metropolitan, Suburban and Brooklyn Handicaps in the same year.