Sunday, November 22, 2009

You Can’t Keep Those Cal-breds Down

One of the problems with the Breeders' Cup, something that's unfixable, is that many good stories get buried in the maze of the day. There's too much to get your arms around. Goldikova, three paragraphs. Conduit, even less. But Zenyatta, open the throttle. California Flag and Dancing in Silks, they're down there somewhere, on the cutting-room floor.

California Flag and Dancing in Silks, remember them? On my mother's eyes, they won races on Breeders' Cup Saturday. But one came before noon and the other came not long after. Most of us were still in the middle of one of those delicious corned-beef sandwiches. So what are two California-breds to do? I suppose, wait for the next issue of the California Thoroughbred to come out.

Funny thing, when California Flag hit the line first in the Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint, I thought immediately of Rudi Groothedde, managing editor of the California Thoroughbred. Groothedde is to that magazine what Gene Stevens is to Post Time USA--they both like to see their own pictures in their publications, although Rudi, far behind Stevens, settles for just one snapshot per month.

Anyway, I saw California Flag win and I said to myself, "Well, Rudi can go home early--he's got a cover for next month's issue." It's not easy rooting for Cal-breds at the Breeders' Cup. Before California Flag, only two California horses--Tiznow in the 2000 and 2001 Classics, and Thor's Echo in the 2006 Sprint--had won Breeders' Cup races. Oklahoma had as many winning horses as that. Pennsylvania-breds had won three Breeders' Cup races.

Shows you what can happen if the Breeders' Cup keeps adding races and giving them new names. This was only the second running of the Turf Sprint, and it will be its last downhill running for a while, unless they come back to Santa Anita or go overseas to someplace like Goodwood. A year can apparently make a difference in this race. Last year, Desert Code won, and this year he was next to last. Last year, California Flag finished 10th, and he hasn't lost since.

Exactly 47 minutes and 8.14 seconds later, Dancing in Silks won the Breeders' Cup Sprint, and suddenly California had as many Breeders' Cup-winning horses as it had produced in the previous 25 years. California Flag was favored in his race, but Dancing in Silks was 25-1, so a parlay on the two geldings would have made for a sweet score. I called Hades, to see if anything had frozen over, and I also placed a call to Santa Anita Traffic Control, to see if Rudi Groothedde was still in the parking lot. He'd have to scrap that earlier cover idea, and split the front of his book between California Flag and Dancing in Silks.

By himself, Dancing in Silks would have made a terrific story, if only Zenyatta, the pushy one, hadn't gotten in the way. Dancing in Silks is the only horse Ken Kinakin, a 48-year-old Canadian, owns. He paid $21,400 for him as a yearling. If that sounds like a strange price for an auction, it's Canadian money, converted to U.S. After I got finished with Hades and Traffic Control, I called Currency Exchange at LAX to get that exclusive.

Dancing in Silks wasn't nominated to the Breeders' Cup, so Kinakin had to put up $180,000 to make him eligible. This was American money, a high-placed Breeders' Cup source told me. Kinakin didn't flinch. After all, Dancing in Silks had beaten other state-breds in a Cal Cup race at Santa Anita just a month before. Who was this Zensational, anyway? "I believed in the horse, and I believed in Carla Gaines' training," Kinakin said. A non-believer was Carla Gaines. "I tried to discourage him," she said. "It was an awful lot of money to put up." Gaines joined Jenine Sahadi as the second female trainer to win a Breeders' Cup race (Sahadi has won two).

I hope the connections of California Flag and Dancing in Silks will forgive me, but my favorite California-bred for November is neither of theirs, but Shadow of Illinois, who won a $40,000 race for $62,500 claimers on opening night at Hollywood Park, a week after the Breeders' Cup. Shadow of Illinois, named after his sire, Illinois Storm, has now earned almost a half-million dollars by punching out 10 wins, and a bunch of other in-the-money finishes, out of 40 starts. Shadow of Illinois won the San Simeon Handicap, a Grade 3 race, in 2005, once went more than two years without racing, didn't win anything in 2008 and has rebounded this year to win at all five of Southern California's major meets--Santa Anita, Hollywood Park, Del Mar, Oak Tree at Santa Anita and now Hollywood in the fall. And oh, by the way, did I mention it? Shadow of Illinois is nine years old. "Rudi? Still in the parking lot? Christine here. Any chance of squeezing Shadow of Illinois onto that next cover?"

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