HORSE RACING ROUNDUP: MUSIQUE FINDS WINNING TUNE.

Byline: Kevin Modesti Staff Writer

ARCADIA - With his horse in the $1 million race at Gulfstream Park an enormous long shot and his horse entered at Santa Anita scratched, John Sadler stayed home in Pasadena on Saturday and watched the Sunshine Millions on NBC.

``I was yelling at the TV,'' the trainer said.

Sadler might have been only a little less surprised than the bettors when Musique Toujours, a California-bred gelding claimed for $40,000 and untested at the stakes level, led from gate to wire with jockey Jorge Chavez and won the $1 million Sunshine Millions Classic at Gulfstream Park at odds of 70-1.

``With a horse like that you just hope you're on the board,'' Sadler said, meaning he'd have been happy with second or third place. ``You don't necessarily think you're going to win it.''

The stunner in the Classic capped the third-annual Sunshine Millions day, a unique event in which California-bred and Florida-bred horses compete in eight rich stakes, four held at Santa Anita and four at Gulfstream Park near Miami.

Florida-breds prevailed in the track-and-field-style points battle, though the California-breds made the final score, 44-28, closer than in the first two years. California fans should take heart in the fact that horses who actually train here won six races and jockeys based here won five.

It took some doing, but the results on the tracks were crazier than some of the sideshows enlisted at Santa Anita to try to give the event a festival atmosphere, among them a Miss Sunshine Millions pageant, cheerleaders, sky divers, trick riders, lasso twirlers and rappers.

At Santa Anita, where the track and turf course were drying out after recent rain, Hot Storm ($44.40) and jockey Jerry Bailey opened the show by winning the Sunshine Millions Oaks; Red Warrior ($97) and Garrett Gomez rallied to win the Sprint over a pair of Doug O'Neill-trained horses after leader Green Team suffered a fatal breakdown on the turn; Star Over the Bay ($11.80) and Tyler Baze scored a front-running win in the Turf; and, Sweet Lips ($27.60) and Rene Douglas came through on the rail in the Distaff.

At Gulfstream, Alix M ($11.40) and Cornelio Velasquez passed odds-on Bear Fan in the stretch in the Filly & Mare Sprint; Lost in the Fog ($3.40) and Russell Baze won the Dash to keep the 3-year-old blur unbeaten in three starts; and, Valentine Dancer ($19) and Jon Court won the Filly & Mare Turf to make the 5-year-old mare the Sunshine Millions' first repeat winner.

And then there was Musique Toujours ($142.20), who made all of the earlier winners look downright chalky when the 5-year-old gelding held off 27-1 Zakocity by a neck at the end of 1 1/8 miles as 2-1 favorite Midas Eyes checked in ninth.

Sadler, the Santa Anita-based trainer whose success with California-breds includes Tizbud's win in the 2003 California Cup Classic, claimed then-3-year-old Musique Toujours from Barry Abrams out of a November 2003 race at Hollywood Park.

Since then, Musique Toujours had won twice in eight starts - at the $40,000 optional-claiming and $50,000 claiming levels - former owners Lloyd DeBruycker, a Montana cattleman, and Richard Glassman, a former BMW sales manager in Los Angeles who said he has been jobless for a year.

``This is a dream,'' Glassman said of the victory.

The crowd of 17,533 at Santa Anita was a bit smaller than the first two Sunshine Millions.

Kevin Modesti, (818) 713-3 616

heymodesti(at)aol.com