DEL MAR : Reign Road Uses Late Kick to Win Feature

DEL MAR — Reign Road, a 4-year-old colt who had never won a stake, passed eight horses in the stretch Sunday to score a one-length victory in the $212,000 Del Mar Budweiser Breeders’ Cup Handicap.

Reign Road’s late move was reminiscent of the rally he mustered in his third start, when he almost beat Best Pal in the 1990 Hollywood Futurity. Reign Road suffered a broken ankle during that race while finishing third, and his career had been impaired since, even though he had earned $424,650 before his $122,000 victory Sunday.

Bred and owned by Jack Kent Cooke and trained by Jay Robbins, Reign Road has now won five of 20 starts. He was third behind Best Pal and Dinard in this year’s Strub Stakes at Santa Anita and fourth in the $1-million Pacific Classic two weeks ago.

The first three finishers were all longshots, with Reign Road paying $30 to win. Sir Beaufort, who went off 10-1, finished second, 1 3/4 lengths ahead of Charmonnier, who was 16-1. Compelling Sound, the 2-1 favorite, finished seventh.

Gary Stevens, who had been riding Reign Road, rode Compelling Sound Sunday, so David Flores was able to pick up the mount. Flores was in the middle of a five-day suspension, but was able to ride Sunday because of California’s designated-stake rule, which allows suspended jockeys to ride in important races that are listed by the stewards before the start of a meeting.

“I could tell that the pace (21 4/5, 44 3/5 and 1:09 2/5 for the first six furlongs) was a little fast, so I was just waiting,” Flores said. “On the backstretch, I tapped him on the shoulder a couple of times to get him closer and he took off. I had to take a hold and save something for the stretch.”

The time for a mile was 1:35 1/5.

Mace Siegel, who owns Pleasedontexplain in a family partnership, was unable to run the promising 2-year-old colt in Sunday’s sixth race when the Del Mar stewards ruled that the horse didn’t have three registered workouts, the minimum required for a first-time starter.

“The inmates are running the asylum,” said Siegel, who is considering legal action. “They just wear you out. The California Horse Racing Board is out of control. They’ve got that Clenbuterol scandal, and then something like this. Some states take care of you. In Kentucky, they can’t do enough. But you run a horse in New York, and they fight you every step of the way. Then the business wonders why it’s losing owners.”

According to the Daily Racing Form, Pleasedontexplain has had two works at Del Mar. Siegel, who paid $90,000 for the horse at a yearling auction, and trainer Brian Mayberry, who says that the colt is the best 2-year-old he has in a well-stocked barn of juveniles, both say that Pleasedontexplain had two other works that weren’t posted, including a work out of the gate on Aug. 15.

“I don’t blame them for being unhappy,” said Dave Samuel, one of the three Del Mar stewards. “But the clockers work for the association (the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, which operates the meeting) and they’re not under our control. We admit that the horse worked on the day they said he did. But nobody wrote down the time.”

Samuel said that when horses’ times don’t appear on the daily workout reports, trainers frequently tell the stewards the next day. “This didn’t happen with this horse, and when they come to us two or three weeks later, it’s too late,” Samuel said. “This is not the first time that we’ve scratched a horse this season because of this. I know one of (trainer) John Sadler’s horses has been scratched.”

Pleasedontexplain was the 5-2 morning-line favorite Sunday.

Horse Racing Notes

Dr Devious, owned by Sidney and Jenny Craig, was up in the last stride Sunday to beat St. Jovite in the Irish Champion Stakes in Dublin. The Craigs, who paid $2.5 million for Dr Devious, also won the English Derby with the colt, who ran seventh in the Kentucky Derby. . . . Another of the Craigs’ horses, Paseana, is headed for Kentucky, to run in the Spinster Stakes for fillies and mares at Keeneland on Oct. 11. . . . Trainer Wayne Lukas’ Salt Lake, a candidate for the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, won Sunday’s six-furlong Fall Highweight Handicap at Belmont Park.