Hollywood Oaks : Perchance To Dream Delivers on Owners’ Dream of Winning

There may not be a more startling upset in a major race this year, or in any other year.

Perchance To Dream, a 3-year-old filly bought for $1,500 and running in $50 silks that were purchased for half price, won Sunday’s $160,700 Hollywood Oaks, lighting up the tote board as well as the hearts of the mom-and-pop stable that owns and trains her.

Easily the longest price in a six-horse field, Perchance To Dream paid $74 for $2 to win while mowing down Sacahuista, Very Subtle and Super Cook. Sacahuista was a $670,000 yearling, Super Cook cost $175,000 and Very Subtle, while a $30,000 bargain, went into the Oaks with earnings of almost $700,000.

Perchance To Dream did not seem to be in their league. The California-bred daughter of To Be Or Not and Rendezvous went into Sunday with purses of $97,600 and 3 wins in 12 starts. She was already a windfall and now she’s a star, earning $93,200 for her trainer, 66-year-old Vic Oppegard, and his wife Sandra, who helped pick her out, named her and serves as an assistant trainer for their four-horse stable.

The Oppegards went to a Hollywood Park yearling sale in 1984 with $10,000 to spend and planned to buy two horses. Seeing a gangly bay filly, they decided they’d spend the whole bankroll on Perchance To Dream, and Vic Oppegard still can’t figure why the bidding stopped at his $1,500.

Ray Sibille, who had ridden Perchance To Dream in most of her races, couldn’t figure why the crowd of 31,546 sent her off at 36-1 odds Sunday.

The answer might be that somebody had to be the long shot, and the other five starters had much better credentials than Perchance To Dream, whose only stakes win was in the Santa Ysabel at Santa Anita in March.

She did beat Buryyourbelief that day, however, and Buryyourbelief has become an important horse in the division until she got sick recently and had to miss the Hollywood Oaks.

Three weeks ago, Perchance To Dream beat only one horse while Ransomed Captive, another starter Sunday, finished ahead of Sacahuista and Very Subtle in the Princess at Hollywood.

“I got caught inside (Bill) Shoemaker (and Very Subtle) the whole race,” Sibille said Sunday. “My filly didn’t get a chance to run. In this race, she was out there where she could get going.”

Perchance To Dream raced in third place, not far from the two favorites, Very Subtle and Sacahuista, in the first part of the 1 1/8-mile race.

On the stretch turn, Sacahuista passed Very Subtle and took the lead. But Perchance To Dream was running the fastest on the outside and when she drew alongside Sacahuista, with about an eighth of a mile to run, jockey Gary Stevens knew he wasn’t going to be able to hold her off.

Perchance To Dream won by a half-length, with Sacahuista second by five lengths over the late-running Pen Bal Lady, who was making her first start on dirt. Very Subtle wound up fourth, beaten by 7 1/2 lengths, and Super Cook and Ransomed Captive completed the order of finish.

Perchance To Dream, timed in 1:48 3/5, paid $74, $17 and $4.80. Sacahuista returned $3.20 and $2.40 and Pen Bal Lady paid $3.20.

“We just got outrun,” said Wayne Lukas, who trains both Sacahuista and Super Cook. “We thought that being up close was the place to be, because the speed had been holding. And the early fractions were realistic.”

Lukas, the nation’s leading trainer since 1983, spends almost as much time in the winner’s circle as he does at home, but Sunday was a new experience for Vic Oppegard, who after 39 years of training finally won a major race. His biggest win before Sunday was in the $60,000 Santa Ysabel.

“I thought we had a chance,” Oppegard said. “We only got beat by four lengths in the Princess, she was closing at the end and that race was only a sixteenth of a mile shorter than this one.

“The Princess was actually a prep for the Oaks, because before the Princess she hadn’t run since March.”

It’s a wonder Oppegard gets many jockeys to ride for his modest stable, because he said that his pre-race instructions for Sibille sounded like this: “If you don’t win, I’m going to break your arm.”

Sibille, whose stakes wins are nearly as infrequent as Oppegard’s, went to the post in yellow silks, with an orange cap and an orange sunflower on the back.

“I’ve really never liked that sunflower back there,” Oppegard said. “But the woman who sold us those silks gave them to us for half price, so we took them.”

When Sibille and Perchance To Dream got past Sacahuista, the jockey was worried about Pen Bal Lady.

“That was the only horse back there that might have had the speed to catch me,” Sibille said.

But Pen Bal Lady, who was last for three-quarters of a mile, had no rally in her. It might have been the glare of Sibille’s silks that held her off.

Horse Racing Notes

The last time Ray Sibille won a major stake at Hollywood Park, he was astride Spellbound, a $176 long shot, in a division of the Hollywood Derby last November. . . . Perchance To Dream was not Sunday’s longest price. Hello Sailor won the second race, paying $84 after being ridden by Pablo Magallon, a 33-year-old apprentice from Panama. . . . Lady’s Secret is top-weighted at 124 pounds, but she won’t run in next Sunday’s $200,000 Vanity Invitational. North Sider, also from the Wayne Lukas barn, is next at 121 pounds and may come from the East to run. After North Sider in the weights are Seldom Seen Sue and Reloy at 120 pounds apiece. Seldom Seen Sue will be shooting for her third stakes win of the season. . . . Honor Medal, trained by Neil Drysdale and ridden by Russell Baze, won the Longacres Budweiser Breeders’ Cup for the second straight time Sunday.