Stronach Has Grounds for Complaint

Horsemen, sometimes knee-jerk critics of racing surfaces, have to get up fairly early in the morning to beat Frank Stronach when it comes to knocking Santa Anita.

Stronach, who owns the place, said on opening day that there were too many breakdowns on the main track. Something to do with too many horses working over the dirt surface during training hours.

Then this week, Stronach took nine horses, most of them with a future on grass, from his principal California trainer, Patrick Biancone, and sent them to one of the Stronach farms in Ocala, Fla.

“The turf course is chewed up,” Stronach said. “We’ll send them to the farm, then figure out where to run them back there.”

Many of them probably will wind up with Joe Orseno, Stronach’s main U.S. trainer, at Gulfstream Park, another track that Stronach runs. The Gulfstream season opened Wednesday.

In a phone interview from his Magna International headquarters near Toronto, Stronach was asked whether he was sending a negative message about the running surfaces at Santa Anita.

“They [track maintenance workers] do a good job,” Stronach said. “It’s just that the turf course is chewed up. I’m going to do some things at San Luis Rey Downs that will help.”

San Luis Rey Downs, the training center in Bonsall, about 100 miles south of Santa Anita, was bought by Stronach in 1999, several months after he had bought Santa Anita. San Luis Rey Downs can accommodate more than 500 horses. During Del Mar’s season last year, Biancone trained Stronach’s horses at San Luis Rey Downs, then vanned them the 30 miles to the seaside track.

“It’s an annex to Santa Anita,” Stronach said of the training facility. “I’m going to spruce it up. We’re going to put in new barns, and build a turf course. I’ll send more horses to California when all that is completed.”

When?

“I hope to have that done this year,” Stronach said.

The Florida-bound Stronach horses basically are undistinguished. Biancone said that the best one is Gem Of A Guy, a 3-year-old colt who has had trouble winning in California.

Their departures leave Biancone with three of Stronach’s horses. He said he’s training 12 horses for other clients, and hopes to add more. Stronach still has 12 horses trained by Bobby Frankel and Vladimir Cerin in California.

“This is no reflection on Patrick,” Stronach said. “He’s still got Thunder Bull, which shows what I think of him as a trainer.”

Thunder Bull, bred by Stronach and a son of Holy Bull, the 1994 horse of the year, is winless in two starts but is considered one of Stronach’s best 3-year-olds. After a bad start, Thunder Bull ran second in a 1 1/16-mile maiden race at Santa Anita last Sunday.

Biancone, 48, was hired by Stronach as a consultant in December 1999, then last August took over Stronach’s horses that had been in the care of Pierre Bellocq Jr.

The French-born Biancone, a third-generation trainer, won the Arc de Triomphe, France’s biggest race, with All Along in 1983 and Sagace in 1984. He crossed the ocean with All Along at the end of 1983, when she swept three grass races in the U.S. and Canada and was voted North America’s horse of the year. Biancone later moved to Hong Kong but left there in July 1999 after positive drug tests for three of his horses resulted in a 10-month suspension.

“Frank [Stronach] and I have a good relationship,” Biancone said Friday. “He’s brought me here and given me a chance to reestablish myself. You work for a big outfit and [losing nine horses] happens. It’s an outfit that relies on teamwork. Horses come and go, because it’s a big operation.”

Stronach still is worried about the breakdowns the horses in his California division have suffered.

“There have been too many,” he said. “Too numerous to mention. Actually, I’ve had more breakdowns at Hollywood Park than I’ve had at Santa Anita.”

The bar he has set for his stable is skyscraper high. Stronach’s horses earned $11.1 million in 2000, the third consecutive year he has led North America in purses. Red Bullet won the Preakness, and his Macho Uno and Perfect Sting won Breeders’ Cup races.

Notes

Red Bullet, who hasn’t run since July, was expected to run in the Donn Handicap at Gulfstream Park Feb. 3, but that start is out, while Frank Stronach and Joe Orseno map out a plan that will ease the colt into the major races at the end of the year. . . . Eminent, third in the Miesque at Hollywood Park Nov. 24, moves back to dirt for today’s Santa Ysabel Stakes. . . . Sunday’s $200,000 San Pasqual Handicap drew eight horses, including the high weights Deploy Venture at 116 pounds, and Purely Cozzene and Casey Griffin at 115. . . . Jim McKay, the 79-year-old ABC broadcaster, is the winner of the Eclipse Award of Merit.