THOROUGHBRED RACING : He’s 94, but More Than Longevity Makes Hooper Worthy of Eclipse

LAS VEGAS —  When the candidates for the 1991 Eclipse Award of Merit were being assessed by the selection committee, one of the considerations was age.

“Mr. Hooper is 94,” a committee member said pointedly.

Indeed, Fred Hooper, born on Oct. 6, 1897, in Cleveland, Ga., was twice as old as some of the other candidates, but in voting Hooper the Eclipse, which he will accept at a dinner here Saturday night, the committee wasn’t motivated by longevity alone. Fred William Hooper, doing things his own way, has been breeding horses, racing horses, winning races and helping build race tracks for nearly half a century, so this trophy smacks in no way of tokenism. The six other Eclipse statuettes in Hooper’s Florida home were his down payment on the Award of Merit.

Susan’s Girl, who won races in the 1970s from New York to California and plenty of places in between, gave Hooper three Eclipses. Hooper himself won two breeding awards, in 1975 and 1982, and in 1985 Hooper’s Precisionist was voted national sprint champion after winning in the Breeders’ Cup.

Ross Fenstermaker, one of the trainers of Susan’s Girl and the horseman who did a superb job of training Precisionist, was later fired, but then working for Hooper has always been accompanied by peril. Hands-on Hooper has never met a trainer he completely liked.

The first horse Hooper owned, Hoop Jr., won the Kentucky Derby in 1943, but the encore has been elusive. Hooper has been back to Churchill Downs a few times, running second in the 1961 Derby with Crozier, the sire of Precisionist, and this year he has another candidate in Tri To Watch, winner of last year’s Champagne Stakes at Belmont Park. Eighth in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs in November, Tri To Watch underwent surgery to remove a bone chip in an ankle and will have to play catch-up with the other contenders.

Tri To Watch’s pedigree includes Olympia, a speedy colt who won the Flamingo at Hialeah and the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct in 1949, giving Hooper hope again that he would have a matching Derby bookend to go with Hoop Jr.’s. Olympia had no license to run 1 1/4 miles, however, and at 4-5 odds he led the Derby for a mile before finishing eighth.

Olympia had such a burst of speed that Hooper would run him in match races against quarter horses. These contests came with heavy betting action on the side, and one day Olympia’s jockey, Willie Garner, told Hooper to “bet 25 for me on our horse.”

The race won, Hooper went to Garner and handed him a wad of bills. “I got all that for $25?” a flabbergasted Garner said.

“Twenty-five dollars?” Hooper said. “I bet $2,500 for you. I never heard of anybody betting just $25 on a race in my life.”

Eddie Arcaro reluctantly rode Hoop Jr., a $10,200 yearling purchase, in the Derby, telling his agent, Bones La Boyne, before the race that Burning Dream, the ninth-place finisher, had a better chance. After the Derby, Arcaro said to Hooper: “That’s the most expensive horse you’ll ever buy, because you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to win this race again.”

Hooper’s father lived to be 94, and his father’s father was 92 when he died. Based on those bloodlines, Tri To Watch may not be Fred Hooper’s last fling at winning another Kentucky Derby.

The 1991 Experimental Handicap, which ranked Tri To Watch in a fifth-place tie at 121 pounds, gave 130 pounds to Arazi, making him the highest weighted 2-year-old since Bold Lad was listed at 130 in 1964.

The Experimental is an annual exercise by racing secretaries at ranking the country’s horses, based on their records as 2-year-olds. The Experimental is not designed to project what horses might do as 3-year-olds. The 1991 rankings were the work of Bruce Lombardi of the New York tracks, Howard Battle of Keeneland and Tommy Trotter, who has been doing the Experimental for 28 years.

What the 130 pounds for Arazi means is that the Experimental panel ranks him above Triple Crown champion Secretariat, who rated 129 pounds when he was voted horse of the year as a 2-year-old in 1972. Arazi, the French-raced colt whose only American start was his five-length rout in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, is expected to be out-voted by Black Tie Affair as 1991 horse of the year when the Eclipse Awards results are announced here Saturday.

None of the four previous horses that rated 130 pounds in the Experimental went on to win the Derby. The first three--Bimelech in 1940, Alsab in ’42 and Native Dancer in 1953--ran second, and Bold Lad was 10th.

Arazi was considered five pounds better than the next weighted horse, Breeders’ Cup runner-up Bertrando at 125 pounds. Next came A.P. Indy and Snappy Landing, 122 pounds apiece, and Pine Bluff and Tri To Watch, each at 121. Among the 2-year-old fillies, Pleasant Stage was first at 123 pounds, with La Spia getting 122 pounds and Soviet Sojourn 121.

Ted Bassett, president of the Breeders’ Cup, will leave the Thoroughbred Racing Assns. convention here Sunday and travel to Los Angeles, where he will meet with Santa Anita and Oak Tree Racing Assn. officials to consider holding the 1993 races at the Arcadia track.

Oak Tree, which conducts a fall meeting at Santa Anita at the time when the Breeders’ Cup is run, was unable to reach an agreement with Bassett’s group when last they talked, and this year’s races went to Gulfstream Park. The Breeders’ Cup, first run in 1984, has been held in California three times, the last time at Hollywood Park in 1987. The races were run at Santa Anita in 1986.

Bassett was guarded when talking about the negotiations. “We’re not going to ask Santa Anita and Oak Tree for anything more than what we’ve asked other Breeders’ Cup tracks in recent years,” he said. “And we’re not expecting to make a deal that would give the Breeders’ Cup anything less.”

Asked about the talks, Cliff Goodrich, president of Santa Anita, said: “We’re going to present what we think is an excellent proposal.”

Horse Racing Notes

Fly So Free will be favored Saturday in the $500,000 Donn Handicap at Gulfstream Park. The Donn is the first race in the nine-race American Championship Racing Series, which offers $1.5 million in bonus money to horses that register the most points for high finishes. Here is the Donn field: Sea Cadet, 115 pounds; Fly So Free, 117; Out Of Place, 114; Gervazy, 112; Native Boundary, 110; Peanut Butter Onit, 113; Strike The Gold, 116; Sports View, 116; and Sunny Sunrise, 115. There will be betting on the race at Santa Anita.

On the track at Santa Anita Saturday, seven 3-year-old fillies are entered in the Santa Ynez Breeders’ Cup Stakes. Wicked Wit drew the inside post, and outside her are Soviet Sojourn, Peaceful Road, Icy Eyes, Galore’s Magic, Arking and Looie Capote.

John Forsythe, who turned 74 this week, returns as master of ceremonies at the Eclipse Awards dinner in Las Vegas Saturday night. Tim Conway did the dinner last year when Forsythe had a schedule conflict. Only 700 tickets have been sold for the $250-a-plate black-tie affair, making it one of the smallest crowds in Eclipse history. . . . Dance Smartly, a cinch to be named champion 3-year-old filly for last year, is back in training and trainer Jim Day is talking about running her against colts in the Pimlico Special in May.