OAK TREE MEETING AT SANTA ANITA : Pleasant Stage Makes the Oak Leaf the Backdrop for Her First Victory

The Breeders’ Cup’s newest confirmed starter had been an unlikely candidate, a maiden whose only credentials were two non-winning starts at Del Mar.

But Pleasant Stage won the $260,900 Oak Leaf Stakes at Santa Anita on Monday, beating seasoned stakes winners Soviet Sojourn and La Spia with a stretch burst that carried the 2-year-old filly to a two-length victory.

Soviet Sojourn, the 3-5 favorite of the crowd of 20,420, finished second, three lengths ahead of La Spia, who seemed to quit running hard near the sixteenth pole. Wine ‘N Music and Green Vitamins completed the order of finish in the five-horse field.

After the Oak Leaf, Chris Speckert, who trains Pleasant Stage for owner-breeder Thomas Mellon Evans, said the filly would leave Thursday for Louisville, where she will run in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Churchill Downs on Nov. 2. Speckert will also run another of Mellon’s horses, Pleasant Tap, in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint. Both are offspring of Pleasant Colony, who won the Kentucky Derby in 1981.

Pleasant Stage went into the Oak Leaf with $10,700 in earnings, for a third-place finish in her first start on Aug. 18 and a second-place effort on Sept. 6. The Oak Leaf, worth $156,540, was run in 1:43 2/5 for the 1 1/16 miles, which was only three-fifths of a second slower than the time of Bertrando, a 2-year-old colt, who won the Norfolk Stakes by nine lengths Sunday.

Speckert, who quit as Charlie Whittingham’s assistant in 1984 to become the Evans stable’s West Coast trainer, had never won a race as important as the Oak Leaf, and he was disappointed that it had been downgraded to a Grade II event by the national stakes committee in 1990.

“I don’t believe there’s a Grade I stake now for 2-year-old fillies in California,” Speckert said. “That’s kind of strange, isn’t it? Some pretty good fillies have won this race, and then we don’t exactly go back there (for the Breeders’ Cup) and make fools out of ourselves.”

Speckert, 31, almost won the Oak Leaf in 1985, but his Trim Colony lost a tight finish to Arewehavingfunyet.

Pleasant Stage, paying $15 to win, was ridden by Eddie Delahoussaye, a patient rider whose style matches the filly’s late-running style. Pleasant Stage was last after a half-mile, and while moving up to third, she still trailed by about two lengths at the top of the stretch, with La Spia and Soviet Sojourn battling it out up front.

Inside the sixteenth pole, Pleasant Stage shot past her two rivals. But the race still wasn’t over for Delahoussaye, because he was having trouble getting his filly to switch leads from the left to the right leg.

“At Del Mar, I never did get her to switch,” Delahoussaye said. “Today, she switched when I pulled her out (from behind La Spia). As I was going by that horse, though, my filly wanted to pull herself up and lugged in. She wasn’t really running the last sixteenth.”

With Green Vitamins, Soviet Sojourn and La Spia battling for the early lead, the race developed the way Speckert and Delahoussaye had hoped.

“When La Spia made an early move, I had to go with her or get trapped behind her,” said Pat Valenzuela, who rode Soviet Sojourn. “That set it up for Eddie.”

La Spia had beaten Soviet Sojourn by a neck in the Del Mar Debutante on Aug. 31, and Alex Solis, who rode Bertrando in the Norfolk, was looking for a sweep of Oak Tree’s 2-year-old stakes with La Spia.

Trainer Randy Winick thought La Spia would have won if she hadn’t decelerated in deep stretch.

“As soon as she saw the track marks (left by the gate tractor),” Solis said, “she tried to prop (stop) and jump at the same time. She lost all her action.”

After watching a replay, Winick said it looked to him as though La Spia had been struck in the face by Valenzuela’s whip as she raced alongside Soviet Sojourn.

Speckert has put maidens into stakes company three times and had won that way once before, when Pleasant Tap upset Grand Canyon in the Sunny Slope at Santa Anita in 1989.

“This filly has the breeding and she showed a lot of improvement at Del Mar,” Speckert said. “There were only four other horses to beat, so why not lead her over here and see what happens? We were wanting to go to the Breeders’ Cup, so we wanted to see if she could prove herself.”

Watching a television rerun of the race under the grandstand, Speckert looked at the screen and said: “Boy, she went by those other horses pretty good. It’s very satisfying to take a shot and be proved right.”

Horse Racing Notes

Thomas Mellon Evans’ farm manager was negotiating a sale of Pleasant Stage to a California buyer this summer, but the owner of the filly called off the deal at the last minute. . . . Bertrando took a nap after his victory in Sunday’s Norfolk Stakes, which has made him the favorite for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs on Nov. 2. “He laid down in his stall and did some sleeping,” trainer Bruce Headley said Monday. “Of course, he always lays down when he sleeps, but there’s no question that the race took something out of him.” In an undefeated, three-race career, Bertrando has quickly moved up in distance--from six furlongs to a mile to the 1 1/16 miles of the Norfolk. The Breeders’ Cup is also 1 1/16 miles, and although Headley has indicated that his owners will pay the $120,000 penalty that Bertrando needs to get in, the trainer would like to wait several days before making a decision. . . . The Manta Handicap is named after the stakes-winning filly who was trained by Gary Jones’ father, Farrell Jones, and Monday the younger Jones saddled La Charlatana, an Argentine-bred filly, for a two-length victory in her second American start.