On Surface, They Are Different

They seem to win all the time, they come from the same barn, they have Northern Dancer in their bloodlines and track announcers hesitate, lest they confuse their names, but Astra and Azeri would not be mistaken for twins. Stand them side by side and you can tell. Astra outweighs her stablemate by a good 250 pounds.

Competitively, there’s another major difference. Azeri does her winning on the main track, whereas Astra, although she frequently trains over dirt, is a grass-loving mare in the tradition of her sire Theatrical, a turf champion in Ireland and North America.

One thing for sure: Astra and Azeri leave one another with tough acts to follow. On May 25, Azeri racked up her sixth victory in seven starts, winning the Milady Handicap at Hollywood Park by 3 1/2 lengths. Two days later, Astra had to work much harder, barely winning the Gamely Handicap for her 10th victory in 14 starts.

In their latest go-round, Azeri has struck the first blow again, having won last Saturday’s Vanity Handicap by three lengths. Today, Astra has a chance to catch up, in the Beverly Hills Handicap, a race she won convincingly a year ago.

Laura De Seroux, who trains both horses for Michael Paulson and the Allen Paulson Living Trust, is not intimidated by the eight rivals who will line up for the Beverly Hills, one of the bigger fields Astra has seen.

De Seroux, an exercise rider and later an assistant trainer during a 17-year run with the late Charlie Whittingham, goes to the ends of the earth--in a way--to separate Azeri and Astra.

“They’re as different as the North and the South poles,” the 50-year-old trainer said. “If they were tennis players, Astra would be Lindsay Davenport and Azeri would be Steffi Graf. Azeri is the lovable one, the one who’s cat-like. Astra is not mean, but she internalizes everything, she’s in her own world. She does everything big, she even gallops strongly. She’s the amazon.”

The World Ranking panel, a newly formed group of seven international handicappers, has found a preliminary pedestal for each. Azeri is listed as the best distaffer on dirt, by a wide margin, and Astra is No. 1 in the filly and mare turf division. Many of the horses on the lists are expected to show for Breeders’ Cup day at Arlington Park on Oct. 26. Azeri figures to run in the $2-million Distaff and Astra’s likely spot is in the $1-million Filly & Mare Turf.

Azeri, a 4-year-old Jade Hunter filly, has never run at Arlington, but last summer Astra, in the 6-year-old mare’s only start at the suburban Chicago track, finished last in the Beverly D. Stakes. A few days later, the Paulson horses were taken away from trainer Simon Bray and Astra was sent to De Seroux.

“I’m not afraid of running Astra over the Arlington course again,” De Seroux said. “It’s a misconception that she didn’t like the soft ground in the Beverly D. It wasn’t the ground, it was her foot.”

De Seroux said Astra was suffering from an abscess, which actually made a hole in her left front foot. After the Beverly D., Astra was taken out of training for a couple of months and didn’t run again until she finished third, after a seven-month layoff, in the Santa Ana Handicap in March at Santa Anita. A month later, Astra reversed the result on Golden Apples, the horse who had beaten her, in a swing that amounted to more than five lengths.

Between now and the Breeders’ Cup, De Seroux must juggle a racing schedule as well as weight assignments for both of her horses. Astra will carry 124 pounds today, a career high, and Azeri was bumped up three pounds, to 125, after winning the Vanity. This is already more weight than Azeri would carry in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, which as a weight-for-age race assigns a maximum of 123 pounds to older horses.

“The 125 pounds last time was a bit onerous,” De Seroux said. “I should have squawked but I didn’t.”

Many of the coming races are also handicaps, and should Azeri keep on winning, De Seroux might have to cut races rather than subject her to more weight.

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Belterra, whose career was interrupted earlier in the year because of throat surgery, was scratched from today’s $250,000 Mother Goose at Belmont Park because of a fever. That leaves only four starters.... Street Cry, one of the early favorites for horse of the year, will skip the Suburban Handicap at Belmont a week from today and point for the Whitney at Saratoga on Aug. 3.