San Vicente still a prep to grow on

One of the glaring holes in the Kentucky Derby eligibility system is on full display this weekend when the Sam Davis Stakes at Tampa Bay on Saturday affords ambitious 3-year-olds a chance to earn 17 points toward Derby participation, while the San Vicente Stakes on Sunday at Santa Anita offers zero.

The difference, if a face-value explanation is worth anything, comes down to the distance of each race. The Grade 3 Sam Davis, first run in 1981, is at a mile and one-sixteenth. The Grade 2 San Vicente, sorry to say, has been a seven-furlong race since 1955.

It makes sense that two-turn races should carry more weight in the Kentucky Derby debate as the first Saturday in May approaches. However, to eliminate every graded race at less than one-mile – as the points system has done – is to meddle in the actual management of potential classic runners and to play havoc with the stakes programs of major tracks. Owners and trainers end up spending races in a quest for points rather than in what they might decide is a more sensible progression of steps toward Churchill Downs and beyond. As a result, an historically significant event like the San Vicente becomes marginalized.

And that is too bad, because the San Vicente (mispronounced “vin-CEN-tay” by way too many people) has brought considerable flavor to a host of Kentucky Derbies. Beginning with Swaps, the winner in 1955, and most recently Nyquist in 2016, there have been five San Vicente winners to grab the roses, plus Hill Gail, who won both races in 1952, when the event was at six furlongs. Silver Charm, Lucky Debonair, Bold Forbes, Tomy Lee, and Determine all won the Derby with a San Vicente in their lines.

This weekend’s San Vicente affords an opportunity to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the victory by Majestic Prince, a colt who was described by racing writer Charles Hatton as having a charisma that made him “inexhaustively fascinating for sports followers everywhere.”

“Majestic Prince was not merely exciting to watch,” wrote Hatton. “He had presence and an esthetic appeal bound to seduce the horse lover’s eye.”

Majestic Prince was also a record yearling, bought by Canadian oil executive Frank McMahon at Keeneland in 1967 for a heady $250,000, after which the auctioneer hammered the sale with, “Thank you very much, and God bless you.” The son of Raise a Native was sent to be trained in California by Hall of Fame jockey John Longden, who had retired in 1966 with a record 6,032 winners, and won his first two races in late 1968, including an allowance squeaker over a muddy track on Santa Anita’s opening day.

“The gutty way he fought for that victory sure convinced me I had a very courageous horse,” Longden told his biographer, B.K. Beckwith. “It did more to encourage me than anything which had happened up to this time.”

As 1969 dawned, laid out before Longden was a perfect progression of Santa Anita stakes events. After winning the Los Feliz Stakes at 6 1/2 furlongs, the San Vicente at seven furlongs, the San Jacinto at eight furlongs, and the Santa Anita Derby at nine furlongs, Majestic Prince became the unbeaten early favorite as the 1969 Derby drew close. Modern horsemen with a sense of history drool at the idea they could have a horse and a program that dovetailed with such perfection.

“The Prince” went on to win the six-furlong Stepping Stone purse at Churchill Downs (working out a mile and one-eighth), then took the Derby and the Preakness in a pair of thrillers over Arts and Letters. By the time the Belmont came around, Longden was dealing with a leg that had plagued Majestic Prince off and on since late 1967. The colt ran anyway, in pursuit of the Triple Crown, and finished a well-beaten second to Arts and Letters.

Majestic Prince never ran again. He died in 1981 and was elevated to the racing Hall of Fame in 1988. His sons and daughters include such notables as Majestic Light, Sensitive Prince, Eternal Prince, and Coastal, as well as the filly Lovin Touch, whose daughter Caressing produced champion and first-year sire West Coast.

Savagery, among the contenders for Sunday’s San Vicente, gets a dash of Raise a Native from a cross to Mr. Prospector. Of more recent significance, however, is his smart allowance win at six furlongs over a wet track on Jan. 12, his first score since winning a maiden race by 11 last summer at Del Mar.

“I tried him around two turns a couple of times after that and it just didn’t work out,” said trainer Peter Miller. “So it looks like he’ll be a sprinter, and hopefully a good one.”

Keith Desormeaux, on the other hand, has high hopes for Synthesis in the San Vicente after his recent third in Savagery’s race. The trainer can take inspiration from the way Exaggerator used a second-place finish to Nyquist in the 2016 San Vicente to launch a 3-year-old season that ended up with a second in the Kentucky Derby and wins in the Santa Anita Derby, Preakness, and Haskell Invitational.

“There’s no danger of confusing Synthesis with the great Exaggerator yet,” Desormeaux said. “He’s got some serious talent, though, and he’s a big, rangy horse who could put it all together and allow us to think some Derby thoughts.”