Precisionist Couldn’t Buy Life on the Farm, So He’s Back on the Track

Remember, for a moment, the racing headlines of yesteryear:

“Precisionist’s Mercurial Mile”

“Precisionist Completes Strub Series Sweep”

“Precisionist, McCarron Make Unbeatable Pair”

“Precisionist Draws Past Lady’s Secret to Get Woodward Win”

“Precisionist Gets Even With Greinton, 4-4”

Between 1984 and 1986, there wasn’t a month that went by, it seemed, that Fred W. Hooper’s brilliant chestnut stallion was not making news.

Then came Jan. 9, 1987, and Precisionist again was in the headlines. But this time, the news was not good. He had broken his left foreleg during a morning workout at Santa Anita and would have to undergo surgery.

Doctors repaired the millionaire son of Crozier and Excellently, but it appeared that his racing days were over. Hooper retired him to stud at his farm in Ocala, Fla.

Now go forward, to the entries for today’s feature race at Hollywood Park, a $55,000 allowance for 4-year-olds and up. Look at the No. 6 horse. Right there in black and white are words to quicken the pulse of any racing fan: “Precisionist, McCarron, 115.”

It’s no mistake. The Eclipse Award-winning sprinter of 1985 is off and running again. Today’s feature marks his first start in 20 months, his last race having been the $3-million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita on Nov. 1, 1986, when he finished third behind Skywalker and Turkoman.

Jockey Chris McCarron, for one, is delighted.

“I’m surprised, yes, but I’m elated that he’s here,” McCarron said. “He’s an awful good horse, and if he returns the way he went out, boy, we might have some fun.”

They always were a good bet, Precisionist and McCarron. Of the stallion’s 17 victories, all but the first and last were achieved with McCarron in the saddle. Similarly, most of Precisionist’s $3,073,710 in earnings were won with McCarron as his rider.

That figure, incidentally, made Precisionist the fifth-leading money winner of all time when he retired. He still ranks eighth.

And why is Precisionist returning to racing?

Not to put too delicate a point on it, he wasn’t as fast with the fillies as he was on the track.

“He just wasn’t getting the mares in foal for some reason,” McCarron said. “They don’t really know why. He’s not sterile. He’s got fertile sperm. But they’re a little baffled about why he’s not getting them in foal.

“They tried two seasons with him and he only got a few of them in foal, so they decided to go ahead and bring him back.”

The “they,” in this case, was the 91-year-old Hooper, who shipped Precisionist from Florida to trainer John Russell’s barn at Hollywood Park little more than two months ago.

Since then, Russell has worked the 7-year-old more than half a dozen times, and clockings such as 1:13 3/5 while “breezing” 6 furlongs have impressed onlookers.

At his barn Tuesday morning, Russell, a quiet, 52-year-old Englishman who has saddled such major stakes winners as Majestic Light, Susan’s Girl and Tri Jet, talked about what could be racing’s comeback story of the year.

“He was in very good shape (when he arrived from Florida),” Russell said. “He’d been in training on the farm for about 90 days. He hadn’t been worked, but he had been galloped.

“He’s worked pretty well here. I’m very pleased with the way he’s run. I don’t think they’re sensational times (but) it’s a little bit hard to know.

“I don’t know the horse that well--this is the first time I’ve trained him--but I think that he’s got enough under him that he’ll go well tomorrow. It’s a bit of a guessing game because the horse has been off for almost two years now. But he’s always been a very good work horse, and I feel that we’re in pretty good shape with him.”

Russell has experience in bringing horses back from the bed, so to speak, and hopes Precisionist’s return is equally successful.

“I’ve had two that went to stud and came back,” he said. “One of them was a horse called Whatsyourpleasure. He came back and he was actually better after he’d been to stud than he was before.

“Then I had another horse, a horse called Shananie, who wasn’t that good a horse, but he came back and raced very well and won three in a row at Santa Anita.

“Both horses had very good attitudes. When they got back to the races, they were keen to race. They looked forward to it, and this horse is the same way in that respect.

“He’s very keen, there’s no mental problem, his attitude is good. He was only retired because of an injury, and there’s no evidence of that injury at this time, so we’re encouraged.”

Asked whether he had a long-range goal for the horse, Russell laughed.

“Mr. Hooper evidently does,” he said. “He told me, ‘Don’t let the Breeders’ Cup be the first race you win with this horse.’

“Obviously, we’d like to build on his record, but we don’t have any specific races picked out at this point. We’re going to take it one race at a time and hope that he’ll be good enough to compete against the best horses come Breeders’ Cup time (Nov. 5 at Churchill Downs).”

Precisionist, whose victories for his former trainer, Ross Fenstermaker, included such Grade I events as the Swaps Stakes, the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, the Californian and the Woodward Stakes, was being pointed toward the 1987 Santa Anita Handicap when he was injured. Russell said that special care will be taken in picking not just Precisionist’s races but the tracks he runs on to avoid the possibility of reinjury.

“One of the things we’ll have to bear in mind is that he did have an injury and we’re going to try to keep him off hard tracks,” he said. “If tracks get hard and it looks as though there’s some risk, then we’ll just not run him.”

And should Precisionist fail, well, the fillies still will be waiting for him down on the farm in Ocala.