Biggest Success May Be Only a Skip Away

Trainer Sonny Hine speaks Mandarin, but it turns out he’s a student of history as well as language.

“I remember [trainer] Elliott Burch brought a horse out to California a number of years ago,” Hine said. “He came two weeks early, and then the horse didn’t run much for him. Elliott sent him back to New York, and then for the next race at Santa Anita he brought the horse the day before. He won the San Juan Capistrano.”

The year was 1976 and the horse was One On The Aisle, trained by Burch for Paul Mellon.

“Laz Barrera [the late trainer] was a good friend of mine,” Hine said. “He told me once that he brought 46 horses to California to give them plenty of time to get used to the surroundings. None of them hit the board the first time they ran.”

Hine was turning back the pages after he was asked why his Skip Away, the favorite in Saturday’s $4.4-million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Hollywood Park, was such a late arrival from New York. The Hines--Sonny and his wife of 35 years, Carolyn, who own the horse--reached Los Angeles a day before Skip Away, who shipped in to Hollywood Park on Wednesday after completing all his important pre-race work at Belmont Park. Of the 77 horses running in the seven Breeders’ Cup races, the 4-year-old dark gray was one of the last to be bedded down.

“When Carolyn and I got here, we were all confused,” Hine said. “Because of the [three-hour] time difference, we didn’t know what meal we were eating. We were eating lunch and we thought it should have been dinner. Then when dinner came, we didn’t know what that was. We don’t want that happening to the horse if we can help it.”

Hine has started only three horses in the 13 Breeders’ Cups, his best finish being 10th. Skip Away, who had won the Haskell, the Woodbine Million and the Jockey Club Gold Cup late in 1996, was scheduled to run in last year’s Classic at Woodbine, but Hine was hospitalized with kidney stones three days before the pre-entry deadline.

Now the Hines are putting up $480,000--12% of the purse--simply to run, because Skip Away wasn’t nominated for $500 before his first birthday. The Hines didn’t even own him then. In 1995, they bought him for $30,000 at a Florida auction of unraced 2-year-olds, then Sonny Hine was able to finagle a $7,500 rebate after a post-sale X-ray showed the horse had a knee chip, which has never been a problem.

The Hines can benefit from a change in this year’s Breeders’ Cup rules. Most of the supplementary money is being added to the purses for the first time. Sonny Hine was hoping that Gentlemen, the early favorite for the Classic, would run, because he was an $800,000 supplementary, but he has been sidelined because of a virus. Hine has so much confidence in “Skippy,” as he calls him, that Wednesday, at the post-position draw, he said he also wanted to tackle Formal Gold, another Classic favorite, who was knocked out because of a fractured hind leg. Hine believes the time would have been right for payback with Formal Gold, who finished ahead of Skip Away in four of six races this year, getting weight concessions most of the time.

With Gentlemen and Formal Gold out, Russ Hudak, the linemaker at Hollywood Park, has made Skip Away the 2-1 favorite in the nine-horse field. Touch Gold, the 3-year-old who has won the Belmont and the Haskell, is the 5-2 second choice, with the chance that local betting might make the Hollywood Park-based colt the favorite by post time. It is interesting that while Touch Gold trains at Hollywood, he has never raced there.

David Hofmans, the trainer of Touch Gold, has had the colt’s nettlesome left front hoof patched 10 times this year, but based on a series of workouts, he’s also confident. “This horse is feeling just as good as he did leading up to the Belmont,” Hofmans said.

The only favorite to win the Classic in the last four years has been Cigar, in 1995, and a Classic winner has never come from the No. 1 post, which Skip Away drew Wednesday. Skip Away has good tactical speed to keep him in early contention, and after his 3-year-old season, which was marked by repeated far-outside draws in big fields, Hine is content with the rail.

Skip Away, in running up a bankroll of $4.5 million, has won only three of 10 starts this year, but he was sharp the last time, winning his second Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont. He has been first, second or third in 17 consecutive races, since a 12th-place finish from a No. 16 post in the 1996 Kentucky Derby.

The Classic field grew to nine horses with the addition of Honor Glide and Taiki Blizzard, horses that had been cross-entered in the Mile on turf. If the morning line is to be believed, neither rates a chance Saturday; they’re in a group of four horses that are all 20-1.

Taiki Blizzard, in fact, finished last in last year’s Classic and has run on dirt only three times. He ran strongly, however, at Santa Anita three weeks ago, missing by a half-length in a one-mile grass race.

“He is a different horse than he was a year ago,” Taiki Blizzard’s jockey, Yukio Okabe, said through an interpreter. “He is very much improved since then.”

In post-position order, this is the field for the Classic, with jockeys and morning-line odds:

Skip Away, Mike Smith, 2-1; Honor Glide, Shane Sellers, 20-1; Deputy Commander, Corey Nakatani, 4-1; Taiki Blizzard, Okabe, 20-1; Touch Gold, Chris McCarron, 5-2; Whiskey Wisdom, Pat Day, 15-1; Savinio, Chris Antley, 20-1; Behrens, Jerry Bailey, 4-1; and Dowty, Gary Stevens, 20-1. The 3-year-olds--Behrens, Deputy Commander and Touch Gold--will carry 122 pounds, four fewer than Skip Away and the others.

“Some of the horses that are in there--well, their riders were interested when the mount came open on Skippy, so that ought to tell you something,” Sonny Hine said. “But the 3-year-olds have been a good crop. I have a lot of respect for them.”

But not as much respect as he has for Skippy, the latecomer to the party who might wind up showing everyone else the door.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

10 a.m. Saturday

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