HOLLYWOOD PARK : Fire The Groom Gets a Major Test

Rick Henson, an assistant general manager at Hollywood Park, and R. D. Hubbard, the president of the track, were sitting at a table, talking about Fire The Groom, Hubbard’s 4-year-old filly.

“Since you’ve had her, she’s run four times and won four races at four different tracks on two continents,” Henson said.

Replied Hubbard: “I’d say that it’s obvious that she can handle different race tracks.”

Running in a major race for the first time, Fire The Groom makes her second Hollywood Park appearance Sunday in the $100,000 Gamely Handicap at 1 1/8 miles on grass. Paddy Gallagher will saddle her, but the trainer of record is still Bill Shoemaker, who has been monitoring his stable even though he’s lying in a hospital in Denver, paralyzed as the result of his single-car accident in San Dimas April 8.

At the Shoemaker barn at Hollywood this week, it was business as usual while the boss was away. At one end of the shed row hang the Shoemaker colors--a blood-red banner with the initials “BS” superimposed in blue in a white-stitched diamond in the center.

“I talk with Bill on the phone a lot,” said Gallagher, the Irish-born horseman who has been with Shoemaker since February of 1990, when the legendary jockey rode his last race and made an instant switch to training after a riding career that brought a record 8,833 victories.

At the start, before Shoemaker was moved from local hospitals to the Swedish Medical Center in Denver, Gallagher visited him daily and their only communication was an occasional wink, which indicated that Shoemaker understood.

“A lot of us are talking to Bill now,” Gallagher said. “Mr. Hubbard talked to him, and (jockey) Chris McCarron has talked to him. Bill and I talk about the horses, and what to do with them. He’s watched every one of their races, on the satellite.”

Gallagher, who worked for trainer John Sullivan for eight years in the only other job he’s had in the United States, supervises about 40 of Shoemaker’s horses that are split between Hollywood Park and Santa Anita. Gallagher says that the owners who sent their horses to Shoemaker when he was starting as a trainer have not moved them to other trainers since the accident.

When Shoemaker was around, Gallagher just followed, even though his experience on the training side was far greater than the Hall of Fame jockey’s.

“People as good as Bill know what to do,” Gallagher said. “It comes natural to those kind of people.”

Fire The Groom ran to her first California stakes victory, in the Santa Anita Budweiser Breeders’ Cup Handicap, six days after Shoemaker’s accident. In the filly’s most recent start, she won the Wilshire Handicap at Hollywood May 5. In her first two starts for Hubbard, Fire The Groom won a stake in England last October and three weeks later made her American debut at Aqueduct and won another Budweiser Breeders’ Cup Handicap. Overall, Fire The Groom has won seven of 10 starts and earned $335,718.

Fire The Groom is well-bred, by Blushing Groom out of Prospector’s Fire, a Mr. Prospector mare who was once sold for $800,000 when she was in foal to Secretariat. Fire The Groom was sold at auction as a yearling for $185,000 and began her career in England. After she had won three of six races, Hubbard bought her from Dick Duchossois, the owner of Arlington International Racecourse outside Chicago, for $150,000.

“Duchossois would love to have her back now,” Hubbard said. “He’d love to have her back to run in that Beverly D. race that he runs at his track (Aug. 31).

The $500,000 Beverly D. Stakes is named after Duchossois’ late wife. Fire The Groom may still run in that race, but it will be in Hubbard’s silks, with Bill Shoemaker rooting for her by remote control.

Truesdail Laboratories, the Tustin testing facility that came under fire in 1988-89 during a scandal in which the horses of several prominent trainers tested positive for cocaine, has been rehired by the California Horse Racing Board.

At the board’s meeting Friday in Cypress, Truesdail was awarded a two-year contract, running through June 1993, at $1.578 million a year.

Truesdail was one of three labs to submit bids to test horses in California. The others were the Harris Laboratory in Phoenix, which has been testing horses in California for the past year, and the Pennsylvania Toxology Equine Laboratory. The latter has been retained to conduct backup testing for California horses.

The board gave Truesdail the contract upon the recommendation of a committee headed by Rick Vulliet, the state’s equine medical director.

Vulliet said the Harris lab wasn’t renewed because the facility had experienced a large turnover in personnel and lacked adequate backup equipment.

“On the other hand, we felt that Truesdail has experienced personnel,” Vulliet said. “Not only that, we sent 64 blind samples to the three bidding labs to see what they could find, and Truesdail showed the best proficiency. About 20% of the samples had illegal drugs in them, and Truesdail was able to find the drugs that had the lowest levels of concentration.”

In 1988-89, some of the best-known trainers in racing, including Wayne Lukas and the late Laz Barrera, were accused of running horses that tested positive for cocaine. Charges against most of the trainers were dropped, but lawsuits resulted, including a $25-million suit by Barrera against Truesdail. Barrera died in late April.

Bob Vessiny, Truesdail’s chief chemist, said Friday that the lab had tested horses in California from 1939 until ’89. “There were some things said about our operation that shouldn’t have been said, by a lot of people,” Vessiny said.

Vessiny said Truesdail is currently the state testing laboratory for Kentucky, Oregon and Washington.

Horse Racing Notes

Fire the Groom drew the No. 11 post in a 13-horse field for the Gamely. Others running are Dead Heat, Little Brianne, Sun Brandy, Gaelic Bird, Miss Josh, Island Jamboree, Odalea, Appealing Missy, Annual Reunion, Formidable Lady and the entry of La Kaldoun and Freya Stark. . . . Little Brianne will carry high weight of 121 pounds and be ridden by Julio Garcia. Gary Stevens has the mount on Fire the Groom, who will carry 120 pounds.