Trainer Sahadi Dressed to Win

The Hollywood Turf Handicap has special meaning for trainer Jenine Sahadi, who won the 1994 running with Grand Flotilla for her first major victory about a year after she took out her license.

Sahadi, 34, was running two horses--Rainbow Dancer and Shanawi--in Monday’s Turf Handicap, but wasn’t sure what to do when her chosen ensemble hadn’t come back from the seamstress. So she checked the winner’s-circle photo from Grand Flotilla’s race, and then she reached into her wardrobe and pulled out the same outfit.

“Except for the shoes,” Sahadi said. “The shoes are different. And I’m not wearing a belt this time.”

She was standing in the winner’s circle after another Turf Handicap, this time explaining how Rainbow Dancer won the $400,000 race at 19-1. There was a three-horse battle to the wire, with Rainbow Dancer and Alex Solis besting Sunshack by a head and Marlin finishing third, another nose behind. Sandpit, the 3-2 favorite and the winner of last year’s race, led for a mile before finishing last in the six-horse field. Sahadi’s other horse, Shanawi, finished fifth.

Rainbow Dancer, a 6-year-old French-bred, ran 1 1/4 miles in two minutes, paying $41.20 and earning $240,000 for C.N. and Carol Ray, who bought the horse in a private sale late last year. Rainbow Dancer was one of France’s top 3-year-olds in 1994, but injuries sent his career in the wrong direction, and there wasn’t a lot of interest in him when Hubert Guy and Julio Canani were scouting him out for the Rays.

Rainbow Dancer went into Monday’s race off two starts in the U.S.: a second to stablemate Shanawi in the San Luis Obispo Handicap at Santa Anita in February and a last-place finish, in a field of 10, in the San Luis Rey that Marlin won about a month later.

“I considered [the San Luis Rey] a throwout race,” Sahadi said. “Just after the start, he banged into the rail, gouging himself, and he came back bloody. It was a debacle, and a lot of people wrote him off, but this was still a horse with a lot of ability.”

And a big appetite for grooms. He bit one on the thumb, breaking the bone in three places. Another groom required stitches after he was nipped on the side of the head.

He carried 116 pounds Monday, seven fewer than the top-weighted Sandpit. Solis had never ridden Rainbow Dancer in a race before, but he squeezed in a workout with the horse before he got busy with Captain Bodgit on the Triple Crown trail.

“You’ve got to get along with this horse,” Solis said. “He’s not a horse you can fight or rough up. You’ve got to give in to him and let him have his own way.”