Horse Racing / Bill Christine : Vanlandingham Seems to Be Back in the Chase

After the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Aqueduct Nov. 2, a reporter asked jockey Don MacBeth his choice for horse of the year.

MacBeth looked askance at the interrogator. “You know who my horse of the year would be,” MacBeth said, and walked off.

The implication was that MacBeth would still support Chief’s Crown, despite the colt’s just having finished fourth in the Classic.

MacBeth rode Chief’s Crown to victory early in the year, in the Flamingo at Hialeah and the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland. In New York late in the year, Chief’s Crown won the Travers and the Marlboro Cup, but the Travers was without MacBeth, who had temporarily lost the mount after a frustrating Triple Crown campaign, in which the favored colt ran third in the Kentucky Derby and second in the Preakness.

Now, however, if the horse-of-the-year question were posed to MacBeth again, he probably would parry it out of mixed loyalties.

In a situation parallel to the time MacBeth was replaced by Angel Cordero on Chief’s Crown, MacBeth himself replaced Pat Day in the saddle of Vanlandingham last Saturday in the Washington, D.C., International, and they teamed for a convincing wire-to-wire one-length victory.

The victory not only thrust Vanlandingham back into horse-of-the-year race, but it also made him a candidate for the title in racing’s most amoebic division, male turf horses.

Vanlandingham’s win in the International, over Oak Tree Invitational winner Yashgan, New York turf star Win and international standout Strawberry Road II, was scored in the 4-year-old colt’s first race on the grass. The horse had had only one turf workout, and that on a soft course that didn’t figure to favor a front-runner.

MacBeth’s ride on Vanlandingham was reminiscent of the one Steve Cauthen gave Johnny D. in the 1977 International. Cauthen got the lightly regarded 3-year-old colt out to a clear lead in terribly slow fractions on a soggy course and then they had enough left to withstand late challenges from Majestic Light and Exceller.

Chris McCarron, who rode Yashgan, thought he might overtake Vanlandingham in the stretch with the kind of run that took the Oak Tree Invitational. “But every time we came to Vanlandingham, he seemed to get stronger and pulled away from us again,” McCarron said.

Yashgan may get another chance, because it appears that the 4-year-old colt is headed for the $500,000 Hollywood Turf Cup at Hollywood Park Dec. 8, a race that could include Vanlandingham and Win, as well as Gate Dancer, Tsunami Slew, Zoffany and perhaps Slew the Dragon.

Vanlandingham actually is in the hunt for three postseason titles--top handicap horse on dirt as well as horse of the year and top grass horse. In the International, he started in his seventh straight major race, a campaign probably unmatched by any other horse this year.

It started in New York in July with a win in the Suburban Handicap. After two thirds and a second, Vanlandingham won the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park in October, making him the only horse to win two of New York’s major races for older horses this year.

John Ed Anthony, the Fordyce, Ark., lumberman who bred and races Vanlandingham, paid a supplementary fee of $360,000 just for the colt to run in the Breeders’ Cup. In contention early, Vanlandingham beat only one horse.

Anthony and trainer Shug McGaughey were unhappy with Pat Day’s tentative ride in the Classic. Which shows how fickle the game of race riding can be, because in the Gold Cup a month before, Day had been hailed for his brilliant, front-running ride in the mud on Vanlandingham.

“For the International, we felt we needed a more active rider on the horse,” Anthony said. “This is no knock on Pat Day, but his style is to be quiet and sit still on a horse, and we just didn’t feel that that was the kind of ride that would fit this colt.”

So MacBeth got the call. He had ridden Vanlandingham to his victory in the Suburban and had also won the Widener Stakes at Hialeah this year with Pine Circle, another of Anthony’s horses.

Anthony figures that Vanlandingham will like running on Hollywood Park’s turf course. “He seemed happy and relaxed on grass for a first time,” the owner said. “The experience obviously felt good to him. He should like a firm course best of all, however. Going to Hollywood from Laurel, it will be like running on a parking lot instead of a sandy beach.”

Horse Racing Notes

Vanlandingham’s victory in the Washington, D.C., International was the third major victory in two weeks for offspring of Cox’s Ridge. On Breeders’ Cup day, the winners included Twilight Ridge and Life’s Magic, who were also sired by Cox’s Ridge. A recent list of lifetime sires before the Breeders’ Cup had Cox’s Ridge ranked second, behind Seattle Slew. . . . The Aga Khan bred and sold three of the year’s major grass winners--Yashgan, Nassipour and Sharannpour. . . . Trainer Bobby Frankel’s Fighting Fit, who was fourth in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, went over the million-dollar mark in career earnings Saturday night at the Meadowlands by finishing in a dead heat for first with Skip Trial in the Paterson Handicap. The 6-year-old will go to stud next year. . . . Electioneering for Eclipse Awards is under way, with some of the first plugs coming from the owners of Mom’s Command and Heatherten. . . . Strawberry Road II, who ran eighth as the favorite in the D.C. International, will race under trainer Charlie Whittingham in California. . . . Ron McAnally, on vacation in Tokyo, will stand in for trainer John Gosden in saddling Alydar’s Best Sunday in the Japan Cup. . . . Jockey Gary Stevens was having such a good year that even though he was sidelined more than a month ago, he’s still sixth in the national standings with $6.5 million in purses. Stevens was fifth when he went down and suffered multiple injuries in a training accident at Santa Anita. Expected to be out for four months, he’s now talking about a return in January.