Horse Racing : Mr. Classic Is Out in Cold at Sunny Calder

Aqueduct, cold as a polar bear’s nose, is not the place to be for an Eastern trainer with a promising young 3-year-old at this time of the year.

A trainer with the shipping money takes his horse to Florida, where the temperatures are not only 40 degrees warmer, but where the race tracks offer six-figure purses for several stakes.

That’s why Murray Garren, a New Yorker who owns and trains his own horses, had Mr. Classic at Calder last Saturday for the $239,600 Tropical Park Derby, first important race of the year for horses being groomed to run in the Kentucky Derby.

Mr. Classic, however, wasn’t allowed to run in the Tropical Park Derby, even though his earnings as a 2-year-old were an impressive $209,000. Only one other horse entered had won more money last year, and Mr. Classic’s earnings were more than the combined total of four horses that did run.

Garren was victimized by the conditions of the race, which said that the maximum field would be 12 horses, starters to be determined by high weights based on 1985 wins, not earnings.

Mr. Classic made a lot of money by placing in several important 2-year-old races--he ran a dead heat for third in the Belmont Futurity, was second in the Cowdin and the Remsen, and ran third in the Champagne--but his only win was against maidens last July at Belmont Park.

There were 20 horses entered in the Tropical Park Derby. “If Mr. Classic had gotten in, I would have made him 5-1 or 6-1 on the morning line,” Calder’s track handicapper said.

That probably would have made the colt the third choice. “I would have had him shorter than that,” said an official at Gulfstream Park. “He ran some pretty good races against good horses last year in New York.”

The winner of the Tropical Park Derby was Strong Performance, a 20-1 shot who earned only $32,000 last year. In November, on the day Mr. Classic ran second to Pillaster in the Remsen, Gene Jacobs, who trains Strong Performance, ducked the race to run his horse in an insignificant stake at the New Jersey Meadowlands. It was Strong Performance’s win that night that qualified him to run last Saturday at Calder.

But maybe Mr. Classic wouldn’t have been ready for the Tropical Park Derby even if he had been allowed to run. On Tuesday, the final day of the Calder season, Garren ran him in a $25,000 allowance race and he finished fifth.

It figured that Walter Blum would sympathize with Charlie Fletcher, the 19-year-old apprentice jockey who is trying to get licensed to ride in Kentucky even though he has sight in only one eye. Blum, now a steward at Florida tracks, rode successfully--4,382 winners--for 22 years with one blind eye.

After discussing Fletcher, Blum was asked how he got a state steward’s job--the racing equivalent of an umpire--with only one good eye.

“The rules in Florida say that a steward must have 20-20 vision in both eyes, at least with the help of glasses,” said Blum, who then recalled his preliminary interview with the head of the Florida racing commission several years ago.

“Do you have any physical problems?” Blum was asked.

“Yes, I’m blind in one eye,” Blum said.

“Is there anything else?”

“No.”

“Well, then, you’ve got the job.”

Blum is considered a top steward. “My right eye is the one that’s blind,” he said. “But I’ve learned to over-compensate with my good eye. I can see over my right shoulder with my left eye. I can almost see behind me with my good eye.”

In 1983, Blum said, he had a cornea transplant, using the cornea of a 14-year-old boy who had been killed.

“The surgeon told me the operation was successful,” Blum said. “But I still can’t see out of the eye, so that doesn’t sound like it was too successful to me.

“The doctor told me I still couldn’t see out of the one eye because my brain is too used to just giving orders to my good eye. He said that if I ever lost my good eye, my brain would adjust to giving orders to the bad eye, and I’d be able to see out of it. But I’m sure not going to punch out my good eye to prove that he’s right.”

The Eclipse Awards voting underscored substantial weaknesses in three divisions last year--older males and females on dirt and females on grass.

Vanlandingham, the champion among handicap males, won only two major races on dirt, one in July, another in October, and beat only one horse in the Breeders’ Cup Classic Stakes in November.

Precisionist, who finished second in the voting, probably would have been the better horse, but after sweeping the Strub series at Santa Anita, foot problems shelved him for four months before he won the Breeders’ Cup Sprint.

Gate Dancer was third in the voting, but practically by default, since he won just one race, in Nebraska, all year.

Among older females on dirt, Life’s Magic would have been a forgotten horse, with a win in May and nothing else, if she hadn’t won the Breeders’ Cup Distaff.

Otherwise, Dontstop Themusic might have won the title, despite a hard-luck third in the Distaff and another third at the end of the year at Hollywood Park.

Heatherten, third in the voting, won three races all year, only one in a major race.

Pebbles and Estrapade, who finished 1-2 in the voting for grass female, were the genuine articles, but after them there was nothing. Videogenic, who finished third, was tireless, running 26 times, but she needed all those starts to earn less than a half-million dollars, not winning a major race until late November.

It was also not a big year for apprentice jockeys. Art Madrid, who won the Eclipse, is considered a skilled rider, but he didn’t pass Wesley Ward in purses until December.

Ward, who lost his apprenticeship in late March, still finished only $21,000 behind Madrid in bug-boy purses. Some voters still voted for Ward, figuring that he did more in three months than some apprentices did all year.

Racing Notes

Ten horses, among them Champion of Champions winner Cash Rate, are entered in the $100,000 Horsemen’s Quarter Horse Racing Assn. Championship Monday night at Los Alamitos. The others are Prissy Fein, who was third in the Champion of Champions, and Easy Conversation, Easy Austin, Man in the Money, Bubbly Bobbie, Movin West, Ettagos Express, Showaintenuf and Eastex. . . . Tonight, Los Alamitos will run the second of its two $300,000 weekend races, the El Primero Del Ano Derby for 3-year-old colts and geldings. . . . The Los Alamitos season will end next Tuesday night. . . . Jockey Terry Lipham, who suffered a fractured skull and serious ear damage and had been walking with a cane as the result of a spill at Del Mar Aug. 2, returned to action at Santa Anita Wednesday. . . . Kenny Dunn, who recently resigned as general manager of the Fair Grounds in New Orleans, worked briefly in Hollywood Park’s front office several years ago. At the Fair Grounds, Dunn was caught in the middle of a dispute between the track and the state over tax relief. . . . Calder almost ran an 11-race program with no fillies or mares last Saturday. The only female on the card was Slippin N’ Slyding, who ran seventh in the Tropical Park Derby. . . . Adored, who won stakes early last year at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park before suffering a career-ending ankle injury, will be bred to Affirmed. Both horses were trained by Laz Barrera.