Dinard Simply Won't Give Up : Horse racing: Despite being boxed in, he charges down stretch to win Santa Anita Derby.

By BILL CHRISTINE

April 7, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

In the paddock before Saturday’s $500,000 Santa Anita Derby, Madelyn Paulson was talking about racing luck.

“We think we have the horse,” the wife of the owner of Dinard said. “But you always have to have luck, too.”

On the clubhouse turn of the 1 1/8-mile race, Allen Paulson’s Dinard had luck, all right, but all of it was bad. Dinard was in tight quarters, with Best Pal, the 8-5 favorite, to the left of him and Media Plan on the other side.

“Horses change leads (shifting weight from the right to the left hoofs) at just about that point,” Chris McCarron, Dinard’s jockey, said. “And when they do, the natural thing is for a horse to drop in, to go from his right to his left.

“But the chances of three horses together doing that in synchronization aren’t very good. Media Plan changed leads and dropped in front of us. Suddenly, he was right in front of me. Dinard’s an aggressive horse, and I had to snatch him up real hard. There’s no telling how much ground that cost us, but it was plenty.”

This turn of events left Dinard on the outside and in sixth place among nine horses going down the backstretch. It was the worst position he has had in any of his five starts.

“He had every right to be discouraged and give up,” McCarron said. “But he’s incredible. He’s a pro.”

Dinard was still wide coming into the stretch and behind Best Pal, Sea Cadet and Mane Minister. From there to the wire, McCarron’s horse ran like he had in the San Rafael a month ago. That finishing kick carried him to a half-length victory over Best Pal, with Sea Cadet finishing third, beaten by 2 1/4 lengths. Mane Minister ran fourth, two lengths behind Sea Cadet, and it was seven lengths back to Scan, the front horse in the badly beaten second tier of finishers.

In the winner’s circle, Dick Lundy, who trains Dinard, quickly announced that the horse will be flown to Louisville a week from Monday to prepare for the Kentucky Derby May 4.

“Fly So Free still deserves to be favored in the Derby, but I’ve got the best 3-year-old in the West,” Lundy said. “He got better this time over his last race, and he should get better by the time he runs in the Kentucky Derby. We’re not going back there to run second.”

Dinard, whose time was 1:48, paid $6.40 as the second choice in a crowd of 46,415 and became only the third gelding to win the Santa Anita Derby. The others were Sweepida in 1940 and Fairy Hill in 1937.

“I didn’t know the horse had been gelded until he ran his second race (a victory in the Los Feliz Stakes Jan. 11),” Allen Paulson said. “I looked in the program, and there it was. Maybe Dick forgot to tell me, or maybe he told me and I forgot. We have a lot of horses. But the consoling thing is what Dinard’s done for Strawberry Road.”

Dinard was so high-strung that he might never have gotten to the races if he hadn’t been gelded. A gelding hasn’t won the Kentucky Derby since Clyde Van Dusen in 1929.

Strawberry Road, the Australian-bred sire of Dinard through a mating with Daring Bidder, the Bold Bidder mare, stands at stud for Paulson in Kentucky. He was booked to 79 mares--about double the average--this breeding season before Paulson closed his stud book. “The stud fee was $10,000,” Paulson said. “It won’t be that next year.”

The combination of Dinard’s strong victory under duress and Fly So Free’s dominance of the East could very well prevent any of the other Santa Anita Derby horses from running in the Kentucky Derby. By rights, Best Pal would seem to deserve another chance. He has lost twice to Dinard by a total of one length.

Dinard, winning for the fourth time in five starts--he lost by a nose to Olympio in the San Vicente Stakes--earned $275,000 as his purses grew to $452,750.

Dinard’s victory ended 11 years of frustration for McCarron in the Santa Anita Derby. His best previous finish had been a second-place effort with Precisionist in 1985. On Saturday, McCarron rode all nine races and won five of them, including four in succession.

McCarron told Lundy that Dinard’s athletic skill enabled them to emerge from that jam on the first turn. “Chris said that if the horse wasn’t such a pro, they might not have come out of that,” Lundy said.

Last Tuesday, in Dinard’s last workout before the race, he ran five furlongs in a fast :58 2/5.

“The speed of that work didn’t bother me,” Lundy said. “Chris said it felt like they were going in about a minute because the horse did it so easily. I worked him a day sooner than I normally would, which gave him an extra day to come out of it.”

The only time Paulson sent a horse to the Kentucky Derby, his Vernon Castle finished 15th in a 16-horse field in 1986.

“He was not as exciting as this horse,” Paulson said. “This guy is something. He’s a champion. He got bumped over there and still won. I own 100% of him, 100% of the sire and 100% of the dam. So it’s a real family affair.”

Horse Racing Notes

Dinard won the Santa Anita Derby on the anniversary of his foaling date in 1988. . . . Media Plan, in third place after three-quarters of a mile, wound up last. “I was confident after the first three-eighths,” jockey Jose Santos said. “When Best Pal came up beside us, my horse seemed to hang. I asked him to respond at the quarter pole, and he was tired and had nothing left.”

Scotty Schulhofer trains Kentucky Derby favorite Fly So Free, but on Saturday his other top 3-year-olds flopped, with Scan fifth at Santa Anita and Cahill Road beaten at at Gulfstream Park. “The horse had very little,” jockey Jerry Bailey said of Scan. “When the pace quickened down the backstretch, my horse’s did not. Dinard will be very tough in Kentucky.” Trainer Laz Barrera said that Mister Frisky might return to the races by the end of June. Last year’s Santa Anita Derby winner, who almost died of a throat abscess last summer, was paraded before the crowd between races Saturday. Barrera will leave today for New York, where his brother, trainer Oscar, will be buried Monday. “Oscar never watched himself that much, but there was never any sign of a heart problem,” Barrera said. “It’s a condition that runs in the family. I’ve had heart trouble. But Oscar once said that if he had to go, he’d like to go at the race track, and that’s where he had the attack. We’re burying him not far from Belmont Park.”

Brothers Brad and Mark MacDonald won back-to-back races, and Mark also saddled a second-place finisher. After watching his Sea Cadet run third in the Santa Anita Derby, trainer Ron McAnally won the next two races.

DERBY TO DERBY Horses who won the Santa Anita Derby and Kentucky Derby:

1952: Hill Gail

1954: Determine

1955: Swaps

1965: Lucky Debonaire

1969: Majestic Prince

1978: Affirmed

1988: Winning Colors

1989: Sunday Silence

Others who won the Kentucky Derby and raced in but did not win the Santa Anita Derby:

Year: Horse

1940: Gallahadion (DNP in Santa Anita Derby)