STATS SAY SKIP AWAY IS UNDER-APPRECIATED.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI Horse Racing 

Had Skip Away raced 40 years ago, his appeal might have been described in terms of his jackhammer stride, his super-equine durability and his owner's motherly devotion.

But these are the '90s, and in horse racing as much as in two-legged sports, hero-makers have largely given up poetry in favor of statistics. So the case for Skip Away as one of the great thoroughbreds in recent history is based not on his style but on his numbers.

Numbers like these: 125, 122, 121 and 120. And these: negative-2, 0, 0, 0, 0- 1/4 and 0- 1/4.

Meaningless to laymen but familiar to sophisticated horseplayers, those are Skip Away's best performances as summed up by two popular varieties of speed figures, the Beyer figures that appear in the Daily Racing Form and the popular Thoro-Graph figures. The numbers agree: Skip Away is a superstar.

``The most underrated horse of all time,'' declared Thoro-Graph sheets creator Jerry Brown, who believes Skip Away deserves the same acclaim that Cigar received during his 16-race winning streak in 1994-96.

The widespread use of speed figures, beginning with the publication of Andy Beyer's how-to book ``Picking Winners'' in 1975, has been the biggest advance in the objective appraisal of a racehorse's performance. The Beyer figures are based on the horse's clocking in a given race and adjustments for the apparent condition of the track. The sheets - Brown's and Len Ragozin's original version - include other factors such as wind velocity, how much weight the horse carried and how much ground the horse lost in the turns.

Theoretically, accurate speed figures allow handicappers to compare horses who have raced at different distances, on different track surfaces and in different weather conditions.

On the Beyer scale, higher numbers are better. The winners' figures for the past six runnings of the Breeders' Cup Classic, the nation's biggest race for older horses, range from 114 to 120. The 120 belonged to Skip Away, whose Classic victory at Hollywood Park in November accounted for one of his four ratings of 120 or higher in the past 13 months.

On the Thoro-Graph scale, lower numbers are better. Zero is supposed to be the mark of a champion. Skip Away has earned almost nothing but zeros since a disappointing effort at Saratoga in August.

His trainer, Sonny Hine, likes to brag about how much the ``figure men'' love Skip Away. And he's right, they do love him.

``When a horse runs that fast, it generally knocks him out,'' said Brown, referring to the classic sheets-player's theory that horses ``bounce'' - regress - after hard efforts. ``Skip Away runs 'em every time.''

Brown contrasted Skip Away with Gentlemen, his chief rival among seven opponents in the $1 million Hollywood Gold Cup today at Hollywood Park.

``When Gentlemen runs a big one, he gets time between races (to recover),'' Brown said. ``But Skip Away, three weeks later, he's back. He's a machine.''

To find another machine like him, Brown believes, you have to go back nearly two decades to Spectacular Bid, the '79 Kentucky Derby winner and '80 Horse of the Year. To find a significantly greater machine, Brown says, you must go back 30 years to Dr. Fager, whose '68 world record for the mile stood for 29 years.

Of Dr. Fager, Brown says, ``In terms of the times he ran and the weight he carried, he was a freak. He might be the greatest of all time.''

Dr. Fager earned a series of negative-2s. Skip Away earned his lone negative-2 for the '97 Pimlico Special - in which he raced wide and finished second to Gentlemen.

So, if Skip Away gets less credit than he deserves, why would that be so? Because, Brown thinks, he came along in the shadow of Cigar. People just weren't ready to embrace another ``superhorse'' so soon.

Of course, until last fall, there was good reason not to place Skip Away among the best horses of the year, let alone past decades. He lost his only meeting with Gentlemen while carrying three pounds less than the winner. He was outrun by Formal Gold in four of their six meetings, including the only meeting at level weights.

Last year, I voted for 5-year-old Gentlemen for the championship for the 4-and-up division and would have put 4-year-old Formal Gold ahead of 4-year-old Skip Away as well.

But starting with the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park in New York last fall, Skip Away has run off six consecutive victories and is a legitimate favorite to make it seven in a row by turning the tables on Gentlemen today.

Skip Away's opponents haven't been the greatest during this streak. But the numbers suggest that these days even the greatest would have a hard time beating him.