S'MOR MAGIC AT FAIRPLEX?

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI HORSE RACING 

For horseplayers who believe lightning strikes twice in the same place, the next Lava Man might be running in the Derby Trial Stakes on Monday at Fairplex Park, the Pomona track where the 68th Los Angeles County Fair season opens this afternoon.

Gimme S'Mor is a 3-year-old gelding. He is trained by Doug O'Neill. He was claimed out of a Del Mar turf race in August.

So he's right where Lava Man was before the 2004 Derby Trial changed history.

There's only one problem with betting Gimme S'Mor based on the Lava Man model.

``Those happen once in a million,'' said Leandro Mora, O'Neill's assistant trainer.

The point here is not to tout Gimme S'Mor in the $65,000 Derby Trial, since the horse is likely to be underlaid anyway. We just needed an excuse to look back at the pivotal role Fairplex Park played in the rise of Lava Man, now the leading older horse in California and a contender for the national Horse of the Year title.

Lava Man's 6 1/4-length victory with jockey Omar Figueroa in the Sept. 13, 2004 Derby Trial was little remarked-on at the time. It could turn out to be the most important thing of its kind ever to happen on Fairplex's five-eighths-mile oval.

Before then, Lava Man had a 3-for-13 record. All three victories had come on Bay Area turf courses at sub-stakes levels. In the Del Mar race, from which O'Neill claimed him from trainer Lonnie Arterburn for $50,000, he'd finished a well-beaten second.

When the Fairplex crowd on that Monday let Lava Man get away at 10-1 odds, it's not as if anybody connected with him was certain the bettors were wrong.

Though co-owner Jason Wood attended the Derby Trial, his Arizona-based partners did not. Since the owners were new clients of O'Neill, the black-and-pink silks that Lava Man has made famous weren't on hand yet. Lava Man raced under the O'Neill barn's green polka-dot silks.

``He was a little bit of a tricky horse,'' Mora said. ``He was nervous, and he had foot problems.''

Any optimism among Lava Man's handlers was based on the tendency of horses who've done well on the tight turns of infield turf courses to do well on the Fairplex bullring.

``(Part-owner) Steve Kenly said, `If he takes to the dirt, it can open up some doors,' '' O'Neill said. ``By no means did we think he was a graded (stakes)-caliber horse.''

From post position 5 in a field of seven, Figueroa angled Lava Man to the rail and saved ground in mid-pack for most of the 1 1/16 miles before knifing between horses on the turn for home. He went past Last Time in Town and pulled away.

``The easiest kind of winner,'' Trevor Denman called him.

Having cracked the ranks of stakes winners, Lava Man tried to step up to the $100,000 stakes class, he and Figueroa going next in the Sept. 25, 2004 Pomona Derby. Figueroa, in the black and pink on this time, saw his hug-the-rail strategy backfire. As they began to gain, they were cut off by We All Love Aleyna, and a wide rally was good only for third to Semi Lost.

``Right after those races,'' Mora said, ``I told Doug, `We have a real horse.' ''

It would be five more races -- encouraging efforts, no wins -- before Lava Man caught fire at Hollywood Park in 2005 and turned into the horse who has won nine of 12 starts since the addition of blinkers, including the first-ever sweep of the Santa Anita Handicap, Hollywood Gold Cup and Pacific Classic.

What's important is that if Lava Man hadn't run well in his two races at Fairplex, O'Neill probably would have dropped him back into a claiming race and could have lost him.

``I don't know whether he could have improved so much in another stable,'' Mora said.

One more similarity, O'Neill notes, between Lava Man and Gimme S'Mor, the gelding he claimed for $62,500 on Aug.12 for a partnership that includes the Kenlys: Each horse has a ``crazy eye,'' with a spooky abundance of white.

Still, it would be too much to ask for it to happen again. This is the sort of history that does not repeat.

All's fair: Fairplex Park's season runs today to Sept. 25, with 16 days of racing, every day but Tuesdays. First post is noon Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, 1 p.m. other days.

The 13-race opening card starts with a mule race and a mixed-breeds race.

The thoroughbred feature, the $65,000 Foothill Stakes for 3-year-olds, could be a duel between Fairplex's all-time leading jockeys, Martin Pedroza (Sailors Sunset) and David Flores (Paddy Murphy).

Pedroza goes for his eight consecutive Fairplex riding championship.

O'Neill goes for his fifth consecutive Fairplex trainers title.

Away he goes: ESPN's announcement that Trevor Denman will call the Breeders' Cup races (Nov. 4, Churchill Downs) represents overdue formal recognition that the South Africa native is America's sharpest big-race announcer.

When NBC televised the Breeders' Cup, it had New York's Tom Durkin in the announcer's booth and relegated Southern California's Denman to post-race chalk talk and losing-jockey interviews. Durkin is fine, but enough of the mock surprise and seemingly random adjectives (``Pigasus launches a didactic and sesquicentennial assault on the leaders!'').

Denman, 53, is beginning his 20th season at the Fairplex Park microphone, and also calls the races at Santa Anita and Del Mar.

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- Kevin Modesti