Ramblin Guy Joins Mayberry Streak : Horse racing: The Hollywood Futurity gives trainer second consecutive sweep of the track’s top 2-year-old races.

Trainer Brian Mayberry, 2-year-olds and Hollywood Park are as certain as death, taxes and the sun setting in the West.

When Ramblin Guy scored a two-length victory in the $102,600 Hollywood Juvenile on Monday, it meant that Mayberry had won both of the track’s top races for 2-year-olds for two consecutive years. Mayberry has won five of the last six Landaluce Stakes, for 2-year-old fillies.

Ramblin Guy, a $65,000 yearling purchase by the Mace Siegel family, complemented the victory that Rhapsodic gave Mayberry in this year’s Landaluce. Last year, Mayberry won the Juvenile with Altazarr and used Zealous Connection to win the Landaluce for the third consecutive time.

Mayberry’s first four Landaluce winners were for the Siegels.

Ramblin Guy, a son of Ogygian and Sweet Ramblin Rose, ran as he did in his first race, a six-length victory at Hollywood in May. In between, the colt was sent to Churchill Downs, where Mayberry’s daughter, April, saddled him for a second-place finish behind a filly, Miss Ra He Ra, in the Bashford Manor Stakes.

“He won so impressively here in his first race that we thought it would be almost automatic that he’d go back there and do the same thing,” Mayberry said. “I was told that he still ran a hell of a race. Sometimes a horse will show more in losing that he will while winning, and I think that that race was one of those cases. This horse has got the right style. He’s got speed and he finishes well.”

Eddie Delahoussaye rode both Ramblin Guy and Rhapsodic, giving him a meet-high 13 stakes winners, one more than Kent Desormeaux, as Hollywood Park’s 73-day season ended. Desormeaux was a runaway winner of the overall riding title, with 86 winners to runner-up Delahoussaye’s 66.

Hollywood Park’s total daily betting average of $7.3 million, including off-track wagers, broke the track record of $6.9 million, set in 1991.

“The main reason for our prosperous meeting was the success of Friday night racing,” Hollywood Park chairman R.D. Hubbard said. “On the 12 Friday nights, attendance was up 55% and the handle was up 32%. And the Friday nights did not dilute our business for the rest of the weekends at all.”

This season, Hollywood Park ran its first two Fridays in the afternoon, but Hubbard plans to make all the Fridays night programs next year, and said that the track would also race at night on the Friday after Thanksgiving during this fall’s meet.

“The most important thing from this meet was the amount of fan satisfaction we got,” Hubbard said. “The feedback from our surveys was extremely positive. We’ve wanted to be known as the horseplayers’ track, and I think that this has come to pass.”

At six furlongs, the Hollywood Juvenile is rarely a barometer for what horses will do as 3-year-olds at longer distances, and Mayberry, 55, has never had a starter in the Kentucky Derby, a race that his grandfather, J.P. Mayberry, won as the trainer of Judge Hines in 1903.

Brian Mayberry makes no apologies for the fact that many of his 2-year-olds haven’t been successful later.

“Outside of Charlie Whittingham, the best to ever train horses might be Allen Jerkens,” Mayberry said, “and he told me that your horses have to have speed more than anything else. Most of the horses we buy are predisposed to being fast. I’ll take speed in a horse every time. To run long, you’ve got to have a horse with pedigree. The jury is still out on Ogygian, but I think he’s going to be a great sire.”

Ramblin Guy was never far back. Individual Style and Set Records, both undefeated, were ahead of him going down the backstretch, running fast fractions. At the quarter pole, Individual Style continued to lead.

Delahoussaye was beginning to apply the whip, and he hit Ramblin Guy 14 times through the stretch. They overtook Individual Style with a sixteenth of a mile left. Swift Walker, favored slightly over Ramblin Guy, came on to take second, beating Individual Style by 1 3/4 lengths. Ramblin Guy, earning $57,600, paid $7 and was timed in 1:10.

Horse Racing Notes

Mike Mitchell, whose stable had been whittled to three horses about 1 1/2 years ago, followed up his training title at Santa Anita this winter by winning the championship at Hollywood Park. Mitchell won 34 races at the meet and has clicked with 35% of his starters, 92 out of 262, since last year’s Del Mar meet. . . . Gary Stevens rode four winners Monday, including Seattle Sleet, who made his first start since chipping a knee while finishing third, behind River Special and Sudden Hush, in last year’s Del Mar Futurity.

Hollywood Park’s overall attendance average of 30,506 was up 8% over last year, and the $7.3-million handle was a gain of 11.5%. On-track, the averages were 12,573, up 11.3%, and $2.6 million, up 6.1%. Last year’s meet was marred by rioting in nearby neighborhoods.