HOLLYWOOD PARK : Jory Hoping Best Pal Will Rebound

Minutes after Best Pal had run sixth, beaten by 5 1/2 lengths, as the 9-5 second choice in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Belmont Park on Oct. 27, trainer Ian Jory concluded that the 2-year-old gelding was a victim of too much, too soon.

Best Pal had run one race a month since making his debut at Hollywood Park in mid-May, and the Breeders’ Cup race required that he be shipped across the country to New York for his third appearance in top stakes company in six weeks.

The day after the Breeders’ Cup, Best Pal looked none the worse for wear and he retained that tiptop condition after being flown back to California.

“Back here,” Jory said, “we kept him on the easy. We were hardly even training him, because we still thought he had had enough (racing).”

A week ago, Jory sent Best Pal out in the morning at Hollywood Park for the horse’s first serious workout since the Breeders’ Cup. Jory figured that five furlongs in about 1:01 would be about right.

At the three-eighths pole, Best Pal, who had been coasting, saw another horse alongside and instinctively kicked into gear. He came home in a bullet-like 34 seconds or so, and his five-furlong time of :59 2/5 told Jory that this horse was aching to run another race.

Could Best Pal be so precocious that he’s been reading the ads in the papers? The California-bred’s timing couldn’t be better, for he has peaked again to run in Sunday’s Hollywood Park Futurity, which at $1 million is the last of the 16 seven-figure races in North America this year. Six other 2-year-olds--Olympio, Barrage, General Meeting, Cien Fuegos, Formal Dinner and Deputy Meister--are expected to be entered when the field for the one-turn mile is drawn today. General Meeting has a different trainer, David Hofmans, but is a stablemate of Best Pal’s since both horses are owned by John and Betty Mabee.

Because Best Pal wasn’t nominated for the Breeders’ Cup, the Mabees paid a penalty of $120,000 so he could run in the race. Sixth place was worth only $10,000, but for the year, Mabee-bred Best Pal has paid for his keep. He has earned $531,195 and could go over the $1-million mark Sunday by taking the $495,000 first-place purse.

Trying to circle horses on the far turn of the Breeders’ Cup, Best Pal labored through the stretch. Fly So Free, who won the race, has clinched the Eclipse Award as best male 2-year-old.

Best Pal had won five times, including the Del Mar Futurity and the Norfolk Stakes at Santa Anita, and finished second once in his six starts before going to New York.

“The track was very cuppy at Belmont,” Jory said. “There was a lot of rain there the Tuesday before the race, and that would have made the track all right. But on Friday and Saturday (race day), it got very dry again.”

Jory is hoping that Best Pal will rebound at Hollywood Park as did Lite Light, another California 2-year-old who ran poorly at Belmont. Lite Light, 12th in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, just missed winning the Starlet at Hollywood on Nov. 25. She had problems other than the deep, hard-to-grab track surface at Belmont, however, having bled in the race.

Jory, 32, has been training on his own for only four years, yet with Best Pal he could be that rare trainer who sends a horse to the Kentucky Derby two straight years.

Last May, Video Ranger, after running second to Mister Frisky in the Santa Anita Derby, gave Jory his introduction to Churchill Downs, running fourth after the public laughed at his chances by sending him off at 65-1. Video Ranger later ran second, beaten only by a head by Yonder, in the Jersey Derby at Garden State Park.

On Thursday, the stewards at Hollywood Park ended the indecision about who would ride Best Pal when they denied a request by Pat Valenzuela’s attorney that the troubled jockey be allowed to ride Jory’s horse. Jory said Jose Santos will get the assignment.

Santos was one of the stars on Breeders’ Cup day, winning both 2-year-old races with Fly So Free and Meadow Star. Since leaving his New York base and working out of California, however, Santos has barely glimmered. He did win two races at Hollywood Wednesday, but that only matched his victory total for his first 85 mounts of the meeting. For Santos, Best Pal comes along at a time when the jockey desperately needs one.

Horse Racing Notes

Besides having a good chance to win the Hollywood Futurity with General Meeting, trainer David Hofmans will send out Individualist to run Saturday in the $100,000 Affirmed Handicap, a mile race for 3-year-olds. Individualist will carry 118 pounds, five fewer than top-weighted Defensive Play. Others running are Copelan’s Game, Bedeviled, Lee’s Tanthem, Balla Cove and Greydar. . . . Frank Olivares, whose biggest victory was with Croeso, the 85-1 shot who won the Florida Derby in 1983, will retire from riding later this month and take out a training license.

Itsallgreektome, winner of the Hollywood Derby, isn’t finished this year. Trainer Wally Dollase is considering the Bay Meadows Handicap on Dec. 15 or the Hollywood Turf Cup on Dec. 16. . . . Those attending the California Horse Racing Board meeting last Friday knew they were in for a long day when there was a lengthy discussion over approval of the minutes for the two previous meetings. Board member Phoebe Cooke questioned whether the minutes reflected the full transcripts of the meetings.

Randy Romero did not survive the Breeders’ Cup Distaff with just bumps and bruises after all. Romero, who came back to ride some more that day at Belmont Park, was X-rayed three times before it was discovered that he suffered eight broken ribs and a hairline fracture in his shoulder. Romero, who will be sidelined for about three months, was flipped by Go For Wand, who broke down near the sixteenth pole and was destroyed on the track.