The Exeter Man Saves It for a Rainy Day

Trainer Bobby Frankel wasn’t enthusiastic about running The Exeter Man in Sunday’s $106,700 El Conejo Handicap.

“The weather was going to be bad,” Frankel said. “I would have just as soon have scratched and stayed home and watched the football games.”

Frankel and the owner of The Exeter Man, Newport Beach physician Patrick Sheehy, talked Sunday morning on the phone. Even though they didn’t know until much later that Exotic Wood, the morning-line favorite for the El Conejo but a mare who had never run on an off track, was going to be scratched, Sheehy wanted to run, so Frankel sent over the 6-year-old gelding from Hollywood Park.

The Exeter Man had never run on an off track either, and in his last race, the Cigar Mile Handicap at Aqueduct on Nov. 29, jockey Mike Smith pulled him up in the stretch. These are the kind of things that account for the biggest price in a five-horse field, and at 8-1 The Exeter Man made his owner look good, winning by 1 1/2 lengths on a track that was labeled sloppy on the tote board and wet-fast by the Daily Racing Form.

The mount on The Exeter Man went to Garrett Gomez; Corey Nakatani, who had won two races with the horse last fall, had been named to ride Exotic Wood in place of the suspended Chris McCarron. Gomez, one of a handful of riders to win 300 or more races in 1997, is taking a second crack at the Southern California circuit and the 5 1/2-furlong El Conejo gave the Midwestern transplant his first stakes win at Santa Anita.

After three furlongs, The Exeter Man was fourth, more than five lengths behind. He narrowed the gap by the eighth pole, then went by the leaders in the last sixteenth of a mile. The Exeter Man’s time was 1:02 1/5, his $2 win payoff $18.80. Tower Full, the 17-10 favorite, ran second, a nose better than Red. Scurry Home was fourth, and finishing last after a bad start was Paying Dues, a multiple stakes winner running for the first time in almost a year. The Exeter Man carried 114 pounds, four fewer than the high-weighted Paying Dues.

It’s been The Exeter Man who has made a career out of misadventures in the gate.

In the 1994 Hollywood Futurity, he flipped in the gate, crushing his nose. Sheehy switched trainers after the horse’s 2-year-old season, from Bob Marshall to Frankel.

“The horse was crazy,” Sheehy said. “I thought [Frankel] might be able to straighten him out.”

The Exeter Man was gelded toward the end of his 3-year-old season. Sheehy bought him at an auction of unraced 2-year-olds for $35,000. His gate antics haven’t improved under Frankel, but he has won six of 15 starts since 1996 and Sunday’s win, worth $64,020, pushed his total to more than $400,000.

“He’s always going to be a bad gate horse,” Frankel said. “The [gate crews] in California help. They’ve got his number and they know him well.”

Horse Racing Notes

Jockey Eddie Delahoussaye said Paying Dues wasn’t standing well in the gate. Trainer Clifford Sise said the 6-year-old gelding, who was second to Lit De Justice in the 1996 Breeders’ Cup Sprint, will run in the $200,000 Palos Verdes Handicap, at six furlongs, on Jan. 31. . . . Time Limit, seventh in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, ran his second good race since then, winning the $75,000 Spectacular Bid Stakes at Gulfstream Park. Trained by Wayne Lukas and ridden by Jerry Bailey, Time Limit won by 5 1/2 lengths. Polished Brass, making his first start since a lung infection sidelined him last summer, was fifth at 6-5.