Precisionist and Ex-Trainer Are Both Struggling

DEL MAR — Toward the end of the recent Hollywood Park season, trainer Ross Fenstermaker sat in a box seat and watched one of his horses, a 3-year-old colt making his first start, go off at 110-1 odds and run next to last in an 11-horse field.

Earlier that day, Fenstermaker had saddled an 8-year-old who hadn’t run a race in almost a year and watched him finish fifth.

Another one of Fenstermaker’s unsuccessful starters at Hollywood this year was a 7-year-old who hadn’t won a race in his life.

Fenstermaker, who has won 16 stakes races at Hollywood Park in his career, didn’t even have a starter in an important race there this year. He won only two races overall.

This is the same Ross Fenstermaker who at the end of 1985 was being credited with the best training job of that year and perhaps any year.

He had brought Precisionist, a horse with sore feet, to the Breeders’ Cup at Aqueduct in New York. Not having run a race in more than four months, Precisionist ran a series of workouts for Fenstermaker, then won the $1-million Breeders’ Cup Sprint. Precisionist was later voted the national sprint championship.

Now, both Precisionist and Fenstermaker are trying to make comebacks, but not together.

Fred Hooper, the 90-year-old horse owner who bred and races Precisionist, fired Fenstermaker as the trainer of his West Coast division early in 1987, replacing him with John Russell. Now Russell is trying to train the 7-year-old Precisionist back to the form he had before he spent two unsuccessful springs at stud in 1987 and 1988.

Unraced since his victory in the 1985 Breeders’ Cup, Precisionist has flopped in two starts this summer and will make a third try here today in the $60,000 Pat O’Brien Handicap.

Meantime, Fenstermaker is trying to put together a public stable. Since 1980, Fenstermaker had been fed an assembly line of horses, most of them the products of Hooper’s large breeding farm in Ocala, Fla. But since Hooper discharged him, Fenstermaker has been scrambling, trying to win a few races with his meager stock until some better horses come along.

“When I wound up on my own, nobody came around and asked if I wanted to train Alysheba,” Fenstermaker said.

Fenstermaker, who will be 49 in a couple of weeks, was 14 when he started working with Hooper’s horses in Alabama in 1953. The two horsemen separated several times, but Fenstermaker has worked mainly for Hooper and been associated with some of his most prominent horses through the years.

He was an exercise rider for Crozier, who was run down by Carry Back in the stretch and finished second in the 1961 Kentucky Derby; he galloped Susan’s Girl when she was a champion in the early 1970s, then trained her in 1975 when she won her third Eclipse Award.

Fenstermaker also trained Hooper’s Journey at Sea, like Precisionist a son of Crozier, who was a major stakes winner and finished second to Interco in the 1984 Santa Anita Handicap.

And then of course there has been Precisionist, who went to stud with 15 stakes wins, an Eclipse Award and $3 million in purses after breaking a hind leg while preparing for the Santa Anita Handicap in January of 1987.

“If that injury played any part in Mr. Hooper dropping me, it was very minor,” Fenstermaker says.

Hooper, who in 1945 won the Kentucky Derby with Hoop Jr., the first horse he ever owned, says that he was disappointed with the way his California 2-year-olds--his Derby hopefuls--developed in recent years. Fenstermaker says there is more to his firing than that, but would not go into detail.

When Precisionist went to stud, Hooper gave Fenstermaker a lifetime breeding share, virtually a standard bonus for an owner to award a trainer. Fenstermaker immediately sold that share for $325,000, but he collected only the first payment--$100,000--because Precisionist was unable to impregnate many of his mares.

Now Fenstermaker, who has a 20-year-old son, is starting a second family with his wife Nancy, who is expecting a child next January, and that’s an extra reason for him to rebuild his stable quickly.

“(Getting fired) happens in this business all the time,” Fenstermaker said. “Even trainers that win the Kentucky Derby have wound up losing their jobs.”

In fact, even Russell is going around for the second time with Hooper. He trained Susan’s Girl before Fenstermaker got her, and also handled Hooper’s Tri Jet, a multiple stakes winner in the early 1970s. After leaving Hooper the first time, Russell trained for the Ogden Phipps family in New York and returned to California when he was replaced by Angel Penna.

The superb training job that Fenstermaker did with Precisionist didn’t register with the trainer until several days after the win in the Breeders’ Cup.

“People were coming up to me and telling me what a great job I had done, but I actually hadn’t even thought about it that way,” Fenstermaker said. “It was just a case of having enough time to get enough workouts into the horse, and then the race just came up perfect for him.”

In Precisionist’s second start this year, at Belmont Park two weeks ago, he ran last in the four-horse Tom Fool. After winning the Breeders’ Cup, Precisionist returned to New York, winning the Woodward in 1986 at Belmont.

“There are some things to know about the horse running over New York tracks,” Fenstermaker said. “But I don’t think it was any of my business to call anybody and tell them.”

Horse Racing Notes

Sunday’s $250,000 Eddie Read Handicap, the first of three major races at Del Mar this season, drew a surprisingly large field of 13 grass runners. Probable favorites in the 1 1/8-mile stake are Deputy Governor and Skip Out Front. . . . Here’s the lineup, in order of post position with jockeys and weights: Deputy Governor, Eddie Delahoussaye, 120 pounds; Santella Mac, Gary Stevens, 114; First Patriot, Earlie Fires, 113; Conquering Hero, Bill Shoemaker, 114; Pleasant Variety, Corey Black, 110; Neshad, Martin Pedroza, 113; Skip Out Front, Chris McCarron, 117; Simply Majestic, Russell Baze, 115; Fitzwilliam Place, Aaron Gryder, 114; Star Cutter, Fernando Toro, 115; Johnny Alone, Antonio Castanon, 115; Five Daddy Five, Alex Solis, 113; and Millero Y Medio, Jim Corral, 108. . . . Santella Mac, Conquering Hero and Neshad are all trained by Darrell Vienna. . . . Fitzwilliam Place is trying to become the first filly to ever win the Read.

There are two stakes races on both today’s and Sunday’s programs. In addition to the Pat O’Brien today, there is the $75,000 San Clemente Handicap for 3-year-old fillies, at a mile on grass. . . . Besides the Eddie Read Sunday, there is the $60,000 Rancho Bernardo Handicap at 6 1/2 furlongs on dirt for older fillies and mares. High weight in a 10-horse field is Clabber Girl with 120 pounds.

On Friday, Private Swish, a 3-year-old colt making his first start, lived up to his good works at Fairplex Park and won the second race, paying $160 for a $2 win ticket. Private Swish, ridden by Castanon, combined with West Boy, the $16.80 winner of the first race, for a $1,118.20 daily double. . . . Unpainted, ridden by McCarron, led the entire six furlongs to win the $68,950 California Thoroughbred Breeders’ Assn. Stakes by 5 1/2 lengths over Matt’s Genie, then pulled up lame following the finish. The daughter of Painted Wagon, who recorded her first win in two starts, sustained an injury to her left foreleg and was returned to the barn by track ambulance. Unpainted was clocked in a stakes-record 1:09 4/5 and paid $6.40 to win. . . . Laffit Pincay logged a triple, winning aboard Let’s Drink Dinner in the third, End Of My Tether in the sixth and Impatient Charlie in the ninth. . . . A crowd of 24,359 was on hand.