Racing at Hollywood Park : Word Pirate Survives Trip to Take Will Rogers Handicap

In horse racing, as in flying, sometimes the roughest of trips end in the smoothest of landings.

Eddie Delahoussaye found that out once again Sunday afternoon when he and Word Pirate were bounced around Hollywood Park’s turf course but survived to win the $75,000-added Will Rogers Handicap in front of a crowd of 26,183.

After being jostled about a couple of times and having been severely checked once, Word Pirate had enough left to track down and overtake Perfecting in the stretch and win by 1 3/4 lengths. Perfecting, ridden by Gary Stevens, finished second, 2 lengths ahead of Chris McCarron on Roberto’s Dancer.

The winner covered the 1 1/16 miles on a firm turf course in 1:40 1/5 and paid $13.60, $5.80 and $4.40. Perfecting paid $6.80 and $5.60, and Roberto’s Dancer paid $5.

It was the third stakes victory of the meeting for Delahoussaye, who earlier won the John Henry Handicap aboard Deputy Governor and the Mervyn LeRoy Handicap on Judge Angelucci. This one, though, was the most eventful of the three races.

“Oh, man, it was rough all the way around,” Delahoussaye said. “On the first turn they were bunched up, but on the last turn it really was a problem.

“I was going to try to go to the outside, but then all of a sudden another horse came out and I had to steady and drop in. Which was all right, it worked out and I saved a lot of ground. But just snatching up on him, I thought, ‘oh, oh, this is it.’ I didn’t think he’d respond that well in the stretch after losing that much ground. But he really excelled.

“He’s a nice colt. He’s been working good on the grass. It worked out perfect.”

It was only the second time Word Pirate has raced on the grass, the first time being April 22 when he finished second behind Posen in the Forerunner at Keeneland.

“I think he likes this surface very much,” trainer Neil Drysdale said. “I think he likes the grass; he can get hold of it. Sometimes on the dirt he has trouble getting hold of the surface.

“But it was a very rough trip. The horse had a lot of trouble in the race, but once he (Delahoussaye) finally got him out, he accelerated very well.”

Perfecting, trained by Laz Barrera, set the pace for much of the way and for a while Delahoussaye did not think he’d be able to catch the leader. But the problems that forced him to lay off the pace ended up helping Word Pirate.

“I think that’s probably his best way to go, to settle and then make a run,” Drysdale said. “But we didn’t want him to be banged around quite as much, shut off here, standing up and going backwards, that sort of stuff.”

Perfecting’s problems were of a different order.

“The roughest part of my trip was my horse jumping every shadow on the race track,” Stevens said. “I had to move him about a sixteenth of a mile before I wanted to because he saw a big shadow and started to pull up and was going to jump it. And every time he jumped something, he came down on the wrong lead and I’d have to switch him back. We need to run him on a cloudy day, I guess.”

Drysdale said Word Pirate would be pointed at the Cinema Handicap on June 10. That, however is when Hollywood Park celebrates its 50th anniversary by racing at night.

This presents Delahoussaye with a problem: he rides Preakness Stakes winner Risen Star the next day in the Belmont. Does he skip the Cinema or does he race here and then catch a late flight?

If he chooses the latter course, it could be a rough trip. But, then, they sometimes have the smoothest landings.

Today’s $300,000 Hollywood Invitational, a Grade I event to be run at 1 miles on the turf, gives Great Communicator an opportunity to avenge his defeat by Rivlia a year ago.

Owned by Nelson Bunker Hunt and trained by Charlie Whittingham, Rivlia won last year’s race in a stakes-record 2:24 1/5 under jockey Chris McCarron. Great Communicator, ridden by Scott Stevens, finished second, four lengths behind.

But trainer Thad Ackel’s Great Communicator has improved tremendously during the past eight months, with a poor showing in the Breeders’ Cup Turf the only real blemish on his record. A victory today would establish the 5-year-old son of Key to the Kingdom-Blaheen as the best grass horse in the country at the moment.

Already this year he has won the San Marcos, San Luis Obispo and San Juan Capistrano handicaps, and finished second in the San Luis Rey Stakes. In the latter race, it was Rivlia who beat him by 2 lengths.

A win by Great Communicator would earn his owner, Class Act Stable, $165,000 and make the bay gelding a millionaire. Rivlia, high-weighted at 121 pounds, one more than Great Communicator, could also join the millionaire ranks by finishing first or second.

McCarron will once again be aboard the 6-year-old Rivlia today, and Great Communicator will be ridden by his regular jockey, Ray Sibille.

The complete Hollywood Invitational field, from the rail out and including jockey and weight: Skip Out Front, Gary Stevens, 115; Great Communicator, Sibille, 120; Swink, Laffit Pincay, 117; Roi Normand, Fernando Toro, 113; Rivlia, McCarron, 121; Baba Karam, Aaron Gryder, 116; and Political Ambition, Delahoussaye, 119.

Horse Racing Notes

Bill Shoemaker, who has won the Will Rogers seven times, could finish no better than seventh on the favorite, Lively One. The Charlie Whittingham-trained colt also had a rough trip and had to be checked during the race. . . . Bel Air Dancer, who would have been sent to the Belmont had he scored a convincing win in the Will Rogers, managed only a fifth-place finish under Aaron Gryder. . . . Angel Cordero, who was to have ridden Slewbop in the Will Rogers, was spared from making the flight to California when the Wayne Lukas-trained colt was scratched.