THOROUGHBRED RACING : A Tense Jolley Readies Meadow Star

ELMONT, N.Y. —  No one is more dedicated to training horses than LeRoy Jolley. Consequently, there is an intensity--a Wayne Lukas word--along Jolley’s shedrow that is greater than the seriousness of purpose found at barns supervised by Lukas himself.

The tense, tight-lipped Jolley had a special reason to be edgy Wednesday morning at Belmont Park as he prepared Meadow Star for her final important workout before Saturday’s Wood Memorial at Aqueduct. The Wood, first run in 1925, has never been won by a filly, and should Meadow Star score such a distinctive victory, she is expected to be sent to Churchill Downs, where in two weeks she would try to become the fourth filly to win the Kentucky Derby.

The pressure of running Meadow Star in the Wood is heightened because she is undefeated, having rung up nine consecutive victories while running against fillies. She won seven of those races last year, en route to the Eclipse Award as the best 2-year-old filly, and has added two more victories this year, both in stakes at Aqueduct last month.

In his lifetime, Jolley, 53, hasn’t smiled much, perhaps befitting the son of a trainer who was called Moody. LeRoy Jolley’s idea of a smile is something like the expression found on the Mona Lisa.

Wednesday, with Meadow Star and her jockey, Chris Antley, scheduled for a five-furlong spin, Jolley was especially concerned about getting the chocolate-coated filly to the track on time. Antley had a tight plane connection that was to get him to Keeneland in Lexington, Ky., to ride another horse for Jolley that afternoon.

With other horses scheduled to work in the same set with Meadow Star, jockeys began appearing at the Jolley barn well ahead of time. Jean Cruguet showed up, and Lee Jolley, the trainer’s son, asked him which horse he was supposed to exercise.

“I don’t know,” Cruguet said.

“Well, we’ve only got 80 horses,” the younger Jolley said, slightly annoyed. He went to a chart on a wall that separated the two shedrows, looking for the name of a horse that Cruguet might be assigned.

Nearby, LeRoy Jolley was giving an exercise rider a leg up on one of his horses. Jolley issued some brief instructions and then closed rather pointedly: “Now remember, that John Wayne stuff won’t get it.”

Then Jolley walked down the shedrow, to Antley, and he huddled with him for several minutes before the jockey mounted Meadow Star.

Over at the track, both Jolley pere et fils stood in an empty box seat on the second floor, just above the finish line, their stopwatches ready. The off-and-on light rain was now off, the early morning trying to brighten.

Moments after Antley broke off Meadow Star on the backstretch, Jolley ran to his left down an aisle, in the direction of where horse and rider would be facing him at the top of the stretch. “They’re going too fast,” Jolley said, looking at his watch.

Standing even with the sixteenth pole, Jolley held up his left hand, a signal for Antley to slow down the pace. The filly crossed the line in a snappy 58 3/5 seconds.

Back at the barn, there was a scramble to get Antley in a car and out to the airport. “I’ll pay for the ticket, just get him to the airport,” Jolley shouted to the driver.

Asked about the workout, Jolley said: “It was very fast. It was faster than I wanted. Our target time was about a minute. But I think this was a product of a very fast track (an already fast track tightened up even more by the sprinkles) more than anything else.”

In 1980, five years after he had saddled Foolish Pleasure for his first Derby victory, Jolley ran another filly, Genuine Risk, in the Wood. She finished third, and immediately after the race, Jolley said they wouldn’t be going to the Derby. A few days later, perhaps with the theoretical gun of owner Bert Firestone at his head, Jolley did ship Genuine Risk to Kentucky, and she became the second of three fillies to win the Derby. Plugged Nickle, the horse who won the Wood, finished seventh, beaten by eight lengths.

Now, Jolley isn’t saying that Meadow Star must win the Wood to deserve a shot at the Derby, but that still may very well be the prerequisite, because this isn’t one of the strongest Derby prep races.

“She’s got to run well in order to consider the Derby,” Jolley said. “She’s always run well, and I have no reason to think that she won’t do that again this time.”

John Veitch, the trainer of Kyle’s Our Man, another entrant in the Wood, saw his horse work in :58 3/5 the same morning as Meadow Star, and he seemed more concerned than Jolley about the quickness of the move. The Wood is 1 1/8 miles, an eighth of a mile farther than what Kyle’s Our Man ran in winning the Gotham Stakes at Aqueduct two weeks ago.

Based on that race--and the general skepticism that fillies don’t beat colts regularly--Kyle’s Our Man has been installed as the 2-1 favorite in the 10-horse Wood field, with Meadow Star the second choice at 5-2.

They’ll line up like this, in post position order, with jockeys and odds: Cahill Road, Craig Perret, 3-1; Wildly Special, Jean-Luc Samyn, 20-1; King Mutesa, Mike Smith, 12-1; Kyle’s Our Man, Jerry Bailey, 2-1; Happy Jazz Band, Angel Cordero, 10-1; Meadow Star, Chris Antley, 5-2; Lost Mountain, Herb McCauley, 20-1; Excellent Tipper, Jorge Chavez, 30-1; Another Review, Richard Migliore, 12-1, and Vouch For Me, Julie Krone, 20-1.

Nine of the horses will carry 126 pounds, five more than Meadow Star. The sex allowance is the only concession she’ll get Saturday.

Horse Racing Notes

Bayakoa, the two-time Eclipse Award winner, will run today in the Apple Blossom Handicap at Oaklawn Park, her last race before being retired to be bred to Strawberry Road. A victory would give Bayakoa $3.1 million in purses and break Lady’s Secret’s record for earnings by a female. . . . Saturday at Oaklawn, Olympio heads the field for the Arkansas Derby, another important Kentucky Derby prep. Others running are Link, Wall Street Dancer, Perfect Courage, Lord Pleasant, Queen’s Gray Bee, Richman, Subordinated Debt, Far Out Wadleigh, Shoot To Kill, Quintana and Corporate Report.

At Santa Anita Saturday, nine older horses are entered in the San Simeon Handicap, with Answer Do carrying the high weight of 119 pounds.