Holiday Cheer for Cerin and Jingle Bell Hop

Just in time for Christmas, aptly named Jingle Bell Hop ran the right race on the right day. Trainer Vladimir Cerin had said that if his winless filly didn’t hit the win column on Christmas Eve, it might never happen.

Jingle Bell Hop didn’t let Cerin down. Without a victory in four starts and forced to settle for two seconds earlier at the meet, the 3-year-old won easily Sunday under Gary Stevens in the last race of Hollywood Park’s fall season.

Bred and owned by John and Betty Mabee, Jingle Bell Hop was the 2-1 morning-line favorite. She went off at even less--backed, no doubt, by last-gasp hunch players--and paid $4.80 for $2, running 5 1/2 furlongs on grass in 1:03 3/5.

“Maybe I should ride a Jingle Bell Hop every Christmas Eve,” said Stevens, who had a gut-wrenching season that was marred by the death of his good friend, jockey Chris Antley, and the receipt a week ago of an unrelated extortion letter. Inglewood police arrested two men in connection with the extortion scheme.

Trainer Warren Stute, unable to derail Jingle Bell Hop with his Got The Memo in the finale, won the closing-day feature, the $78,250 On Trust Handicap, with another offspring of the Chilean-bred sire Memo when Grey Memo rallied for a one-length win.

Grey Memo, ridden by Garrett Gomez, lacked a finishing kick in his seven previous races, but Sunday he made up nine lengths after outrunning only one horse through the first half-mile. None of the horses in the seven-horse field had won his previous start, and Cliquot, who finished second after not withstanding Grey Memo, lost for the ninth consecutive time. Cliquot’s last victory came in last year’s On Trust.

Favored Unlimited Value was the early leader before finishing fourth. Grey Memo, winning for the fifth time in 18 starts overall, earned $48,250 after running 7 1/2 furlongs in 1:28 1/5. His last win came in the Snow Chief on April 30 at Hollywood Park, where he has scored three of his victories.

Hollywood Park, blessed last fall with the day-to-day drama of Laffit Pincay’s successful assault on Bill Shoemaker’s career-wins record, couldn’t match those figures at either the turnstiles or the betting windows this time. Business dipped across the board for the 35-day meet, with on-track attendance--averaging 6,880 a day--dropping almost 10% and the on-track average handle --$1.6 million--plunging 11%. Overall betting averaged $9.6 million a day, a drop of almost 6%.

Attractive betting cards were scarce. A general horse shortage hit Hollywood hard, and the size of the average field was 7.5 horses. A year ago, the average was almost nine.

“We expected to be soft compared to last fall’s exceptional numbers,” said Rick Baedeker, the Hollywood Park president. “Frankly, we’re more concerned about the short fields and we will do everything within our power, and in conjunction with Santa Anita and Del Mar, to fix the problem.”

Pincay, who will be 54 next Friday, almost won back-to-back riding titles, but he couldn’t overcome a five-day suspension late in the meet. Pincay and Alex Solis won 31 races apiece and wound up second to Victor Espinoza, whose 32-win total was the same as Pincay’s a year ago. Espinoza, Pincay and Solis won one race apiece on closing day.

Espinoza, who won his first major Southern California riding title at Hollywood Park’s main meet earlier in the year, also won the Del Mar title, giving him three of the year’s five championships. Corey Nakatani was the leader at Santa Anita and Pincay was No. 1 at the Oak Tree meet.

Pincay will start the Santa Anita meet, on Tuesday, with 9,043 career wins. He has six mounts on the nine-race opening-day card.

Cerin’s win with Jingle Bell Hop was his 12th of the meet, but he finished second to Bobby Frankel in the trainer standings. Frankel, who posted 14 wins, also was the meet’s stakes leader with four victories--in fact, he was the only trainer to win more than one stake. Frankel has won 12 Hollywood Park titles, his first in 1972, and this was the second time he swept two meet titles in one year. The first was in 1981.

Doug O’Neill, who finished third in the training standings with 10 wins, started only 38 horses and won at a 26% clip. O’Neill’s big horse was Sky Jack, who won the Native Diver Handicap by seven lengths.

Three early scratches reduced Santa Anita’s opening card to 75 horses, which is better than what Hollywood Park averaged for the season, but not by much. One of the scratches was Millencolin in the feature, the $200,000 Malibu Stakes. With six horses remaining, Caller One is the 9-5 morning-line favorite and Dixie Union is the second choice at 2-1.

Notes

Victor Espinoza ranks seventh nationally with almost $13 million in purses. . . . The last jockey to sweep both annual meets at Hollywood was Alex Solis in 1996. . . . Designed For Luck is the 3-1 favorite in Santa Anita’s other opening-day stake, the $75,000 Sir Beaufort. Trained by Vladimir Cerin, the 3-year-old gelding finished first in the Hollywood Derby, but Brahms was moved up to first and Designed For Luck was dropped to fifth by the stewards because of interference. Also running in the Sir Beaufort is Duke Of Green, seeking his first win since taking a division of the Oceanside Stakes on opening day at Del Mar. . . . Santa Anita’s first post Tuesday is noon.