Beverly Hills Handicap : For a Change, Auspiciante Is First Instead of Northern Aspen, Reloy

For fans who had gotten bored with the monotony of Northern Aspen and Reloy running first and second every time they met, Sunday brought Auspiciante, an oversized, Argentine-bred mare who beat them both in the $127,600 Beverly Hills Handicap at Hollywood Park.

Northern Aspen finished the Beverly Hills gasping from a rapid early pace that jockey Gary Stevens didn’t want to set, and Reloy’s Bill Shoemaker, getting the start right for the first time in three stakes, didn’t have enough horse at the finish as Auspiciante overtook Reloy in the last 20 yards to win by a neck before 30,446.

Reloy hung on for second, while Northern Aspen was a distant seventh.

Auspiciante finished last when Reloy and Northern Aspen ran 1-2 in the Santa Ana Handicap at Santa Anita in March and Jack Kent Cooke’s 6-year-old hadn’t won a race since winning the Matriarch at Hollywood Park last Nov. 23.

Past-performance lines showed a sixth, a second, two sevenths and another sixth since the Matriarch win. So Auspiciante’s $2 mutuels Sunday were $26.60, $9.60 and $5.60. Reloy, who went off the 2-1 second choice, paid $4.20 and $3.60 and Festivity, who ran third, two-plus lengths behind the winner, returned $4.40.

Northern Aspen, who had been first twice and second twice against Reloy in her only four races since coming to America from France, was the even-money favorite in the eight-horse field and held the lead until the top of the stretch.

Auspiciante is always paying a price. Last year, when she won three out of seven starts, the win payoffs were $30, $27.20 and $32.80.

The rider for that $30 race, an allowance at Del Mar in August, was Pat Valenzuela. “Then I took the wrong call (three weeks later) for the Ramona Handicap,” Valenzuela was saying Sunday.

In the Ramona, Valenzuela rode Aberuschka, who ran fourth while Auspiciante was scoring another upset. Four other jockeys--including Stevens for the Ramona--had ridden Auspiciante during the interim, but Valenzuela got back on her at the right time Sunday.

“We bobbled in the first turn and I had to check her,” Valenzuela said of Auspiciante. “But she was laying easy after that, and it was a little tight splitting horses in the stretch, but I thought she’d run good, because she had been working good in the mornings. I wasn’t on her, but recently she worked a mile in 1:38 and something.”

The win was worth $64,600, increasing Auspiciante’s earnings to more than $400,000. Under 117 pounds, which was four less than Northern Aspen and three under Reloy, Auspiciante ran the 1 1/8 miles on grass in 1:46 1/5, three-fifths of a second slower than stakes males managed on Saturday.

Northern Aspen’s annihilating early pace was :45 for the half-mile and 1:08 2/5 for three-quarters, although most of the jockeys in the race doubted the timer.

“I can’t believe those fractions,” Valenzuela said. “I wasn’t far back from the leaders (fifth after six furlongs, but less than six lengths from Northern Aspen), and I would have thought that I would have been way back if they were really going that fast.”

Shoemaker, who had broken badly with Temperate Sil and Le Belvedere, finishing next-to-last in two earlier weekend stakes, thought Stevens had too tight a hold on Northern Aspen for the mare to be going that fast.

“I’m not sure of those fractions,” Stevens said. “Most of the time, I can tell when I’m going that fast, yet here was Shoe, right alongside us.”

No matter what the fractions, the race didn’t materialize the way Stevens and George Scott, Northern Aspen’s trainer, had hoped. They both thought that the best place to be would have been second at the start.

“But my mare saw daylight at the start, and she was off to the races,” Stevens said. “She needs to be behind horses, and covered, in order to be effective. She’s got that big run for the last five-sixteenths of a mile, and that’s it.”

Instead, Northern Aspen was finished when the crucial running began. “She tired at the quarter pole,” Stevens said. “I hit her three or four times, but she didn’t do anything. She’s such a smart mare that she was protecting herself by then.”

The win had a buoyant effect on trainer Ron McAnally’s barn, which had been piling up more seconds and thirds (16) than wins (7) in 50 races at Hollywood Park prior to Sunday. McAnally had saddled some winners in Northern California, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a stakes victory locally. With no stakes wins at Santa Anita, either, the last time turns out to be Auspiciante’s victory in the Matriarch.

“We sure haven’t raised any hell,” McAnally said. “We really haven’t had the stock. It happens like that sometimes--you lose the big horse (John Henry) and then you can’t put anything together.”

McAnally said that Auspiciante’s poor recent form wasn’t due to any major problems, just some muscle soreness in the back.

“I thought some of these guys might have gone to the well too often,” McAnally said. “My mare’s been training well, a freshener helped and the fact that they ran that fast early didn’t hurt.”

With opportunities limited for distaffers on the grass, Auspiciante’s next start probably won’t be until the Ramona Handicap at Del Mar on Sept. 13. Pat Valenzuela may pick the right mount this time.

Horse Racing Notes

Hollywood Park has a rare Monday program scheduled today, with 10 California-bred fillies and mares entered in the $100,000 Valkyr Handicap. . . . Bill Shoemaker, talking about his trip on Reloy in the Beverly Hills Handicap: “I rode like I thought I had to in order to win, but it didn’t happen. My filly was hanging on pretty good at the end, but that fast early pace had to hurt her chances.” . . . Pat Valenzuela clicked with another longshot in the last race, riding He’s a Saros to his first win of the year. . . . Chris McCarron was back at Hollywood Park after riding Lady’s Secret to a second-place finish Saturday in the Molly Pitcher Handicap at Monmouth Park. “It just wasn’t her day,” McCarron said of the 1986 Horse of the Year. . . . Le Belvedere has a sore left shoulder after hopping in the air at the start of Saturday’s American Handicap. . . . Buryyourbelief will miss the Hollywood Oaks next Sunday because of a temperature and a cough.