Sandpit Provides De Menezes Revenge, Wins Turf Handicap

It bothers Sergio Coutinho de Menezes that Northern Spur beat his Sandpit for the Eclipse Award for best male turf horse last year.

The vote was clear-cut, 189-61, and what carried the day was Northern Spur’s victory in the Breeders’ Cup Turf, a race that would have cost de Menezes $400,000 to run in, because Sandpit wasn’t eligible.

Northern Spur won only one other race all year, but that victory came in the Oak Tree Invitational at Santa Anita, where he beat Sandpit by 1 1/2 lengths.

“For the entire year, no horse was more consistent than mine,” said de Menezes, who then rattled off most of Sandpit’s four wins and three seconds in nine starts, most of them in Grade I races.

It will cost Sandpit $400,000 to run in the Breeders’ Cup this year, and de Menezes is not likely to pony up an amount like that, but maybe 1996 will still be different for his durable 7-year-old. At least de Menezes and his trainer, Richard Mandella, will have bragging rights through May, based on Sandpit’s workmanlike 3 1/2-length victory over Northern Spur on Monday in the $500,000 Hollywood Turf Handicap.

Northern Spur, who has run only three times since the Breeders’ Cup in October, carried three pounds more than Sandpit, but he was more than 11 lengths back early, and his late run wasn’t enough. Sandpit, ridden by Corey Nakatani, completed 1 1/4 miles in 1:59 2/5 and paid $9.20 as the third betting choice in the six-horse field. Northern Spur, the 8-5 favorite, finished three-quarters of a length in front of Awad.

The Hollywood Turf Handicap was one of the races that got away last year for Sandpit, who gave Earl Of Barking seven pounds and finished second to the 24-1 shot. Earl Of Barking, who hasn’t won since, finished fifth Monday.

De Menezes, who lives in Rio de Janeiro, took an 11 1/2-hour flight to Los Angeles and arrived a couple of hours before the race. “It is better than staying home and listening [to the race call] on the telephone,” he said.

The Brazilian-bred Sandpit has 11 wins and nine seconds in 28 starts, and his $300,000 payday Monday sent his earnings over the $2.1-million mark. He hadn’t won in almost a year, since running first in the Caesars Palace Turf Championship at Hollywood last July, and the next shots in the Sandpit- Northern Spur rivalry could well be fired in this year’s Caesars race, scheduled for July 21.

Petit Poucet, back in California after he was nipped at the wire by Mecke in the Early Times Turf Classic at Churchill Downs earlier this month, led by seven lengths after six furlongs, with Sandpit in second and Northern Spur fourth. Once Nakatani turned him loose, on the far turn, Sandpit streaked past Petit Poucet, and Northern Spur, under Chris McCarron, began to make up ground from the far outside. Sandpit had three lengths on Northern Spur with an eighth of a mile left and needed only a hand ride from Nakatani the rest of the way.

“I know he’s one of the best horses in the country, and we’ve been messing with him a little bit,” Nakatani said. “His trip to Japan [for an eighth-place finish in the Japan Cup] was tough on him, and then when he came back he hurt himself. Today, he was back on his game. He just did everything right. He’s a free-running horse, and I just stayed out of his way and let him do all the work.”

McCarron was disappointed with the way Northern Spur ran. The 5-year-old had scored a solid allowance victory at Hollywood Park on May 1 as a prep for Monday.

“The first three-quarters, he wasn’t trying to run for me,” McCarron said. “For whatever reason . . . he wasn’t interested in the race. Finally, when he got to the turn, he started picking up horses. He didn’t put in his usual good run, though. He made a little bit of a run, passed a couple of horses and then he hung a little bit.”

Horse Racing Notes

Two out of three isn’t bad. Trainer Richard Mandella was at Belmont Park, where his Afternoon Deelites was a length short in the Metropolitan Handicap, but besides the victory with Sandpit at Hollywood Park, his barn also won the $76,400 Melair Stakes with Supercilious, who beat Karakorum by 5 1/2 lengths. . . . Igotrhythm, trained by Bobby Frankel for Edmund Gann and ridden by Russell Baze, ran down Airistar in the stretch for a 1 1/2-length victory in the $154,650 Soviet Problem Breeders’ Cup Handicap at Golden Gate Fields. Igotrhythm, who is stabled at Hollywood, has won four of five starts this year. . . . Swiss Yodeler, who broke his maiden in his first start with a 3 1/2-length victory, came back to win the $51,550 Westchester by four lengths.

The Hollywood Park stewards, in clearing trainer Bob Hess Jr. of responsibility after one of his horses tested positive for prohibited medications after a race at Santa Anita in January, said that evidence indicated that the horse’s feed had been contaminated with jimsonweed. The horse, Layton Hill, who finished second in a $24,000 race, tested positive for scopolamine, which can be a depressant. The stewards have yet to rule whether Layton Hill should forfeit the $4,800 second-place purse.