Losses Certainly No Drop in the Bucket

Welcome to Dropout Downs for Saturday’s 14th running of the Breeders’ Cup.

Can’t find Dropout Downs on your map? Well, actually, they’re still calling it Hollywood Park. It’s between Kelso--the street, not the horse--and Century Boulevard on Prairie Avenue, right there in Inglewood.

Hollywood Park has been hit by the worst Breeders’ Cup luck to befall a track since the series was launched in 1984. Singspiel’s workout injury Thursday made him at least the 19th horse to be knocked out of Saturday’s races.

Most of the scratches, among them Singspiel, Gentlemen, Formal Gold and Twice The Vice, were top contenders, if not favorites.

Clyde Hirt, who writes about racing for Sports Eye, has dubbed this year’s event “the Red Cross Cup.”

Through injury and illness, there has been a daily stream of dropouts.

“If you ran this thing in September, all of them would have made it,” said trainer Wayne Lukas, a 13-time Breeders’ Cup winner who still has eight contenders in his barn. “But there’d be too many other obstacles to running the Breeders’ Cup that early.”

Unlike most local trainers, Lukas has kept his horses at Santa Anita and they’ll be vanned the 35 miles to Hollywood Park early Saturday.

No one seems to be blaming the racing surfaces at Hollywood Park for the injuries.

“Some of the injuries came at Santa Anita,” said Hall of Fame trainer Bobby Frankel. “Other horses from out of town had problems before they came here, and then they just came to a head.”

Trainers Patrick Byrne, John Sadler and David Hofmans also said Hollywood Park is a safe place to train. Byrne’s three Breeders’ Cup favorites--Favorite Trick in the Juvenile, Countess Diana in the Juvenile Fillies and Richter Scale in the Sprint--have been working extremely fast in the mornings, something that has caught John Nerud’s attention. Nerud is a Hall of Fame trainer, one of the original directors of the Breeders’ Cup and still a board member.

“They work horses too fast everywhere,” Nerud said. “Tale Of The Cat [scratched from the Sprint] worked real fast at the Meadowlands before he shipped. Trainers are caught up in this. They get almost as much publicity for a fast work as they do for winning a race, and they love it.”

According to Hofmans, who’s trying to win the Breeders’ Cup Classic with Touch Gold, too much is asked of many horses.

“There’s a lot of wear and tear,” he said. “People are pushing too much to keep running. There’s too much racing and too much purse money being thrown around, which results in running horses more than we should.”

Even though Touch Gold trains at Hollywood Park, he has never run there. His schedule this year has taken him to Kentucky, Maryland, New York and New Jersey. He has crossed the country and come back three times.

Breeders’ Cup Notes

Alex Solis will replace Chris Antley as the jockey on longshot Savinio in the Classic. . . . Solis, winless with 17 Breeders’ Cup mounts, will be aboard Sharp Cat, one of the favorites, in the Distaff. “She had a difficult time putting away Twice The Vice last time, but the way she finished [at 1 1/16 miles] tells me she can get [1 1/8 miles]. She can gallop along at :22 and :46 and still have plenty left.”