Hovdey: Success may win over Pain and Misery

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On the face of it, Pain and Misery is just about the worst name you could give a racehorse. This is not to trample on an owners first amendment rights to freedom of speech and its more creative expressions (as upheld in The Jockey Club vs. Mike Pegram in the naming of Isitingood). But this is 2015, for Petes sake, and the tolerance for any whiff of a cold-hearted attitude toward the welfare of the animal has pretty much evaporated.

Furthermore, its not as if Pain and Misery is going away anytime soon. In his first race as a 3-year-old last weekend, which was also his first race for trainer Richard Mandella, the racy brown gelding just missed winning the $75,000 Baffle Stakes at about 6 1/2 furlongs down the hillside course at Santa Anita. He was caught in the last jumps by Bench Warrant, who was coming off a pretty good effort to Lord Nelson and Texas Red in the San Vicente, in a race that put some life in a quiet Sunday afternoon.

Pain and Misery was ridden by young Flavien Prat, who did not as Trevor Denman suggested at one point during his call of the race drop his whip in the heat of the battle. To Mandella it didnt matter much, since his expectations were modest, and he was pleased with both horse and rider.

He came here from New Mexico during the fall meet at Del Mar, Mandella said. But he needed to back off a little before he could go forward. After that he came along really good. I needed to get a race into him, and the 6 1/2 on the turf was the only thing around. He did it really well, so now we can think about something like the San Felipe with him.

The San Felipe Stakes, on March 7, is the next major West Coast stop on the Kentucky Derby Express. Pain and Miserys pedigree by Bob and John out of a Running Stag mare suggests that the 1 1/16 miles of the San Felipe should be no sweat, and if he can handle the dirt at Zia Park he will love the stuff at Santa Anita.

This is a sweetheart of a horse, Mandella said. Good-natured. Does everything right. Just a pleasure to be around.

Which begs the question why does such a nice horse have to be burdened with such a terrible name? In a column from his collection This Was Racing, Joe Palmer held forth on the naming of horses for reasons both naughty and nice. He brought up a fellow who called one of his horses Ugly Mary and another Losing Clon.

He approached this on a practical level, Palmer wrote. He said with those names female hunch players would not bet on them, and he would get better odds when they won.

Of course, this is both sexist and wildly incorrect, unless female hunch players make up considerably more of the pari-mutuel pools that weve been led to believe. Pain and Misery went off at 10-1 in the Baffle, but the price could be blamed more on the uncertain 2-year-old form he brought to town from New Mexico, by way of Zia Park, where he won a maiden race and then the Governors Cup last fall for trainer Henry Dominguez.

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Hovdey: Success may win over Pain and Misery