Recalling Cigar as a 3-Year-Old : Horse racing: Former trainer Alex Hassinger saw some early talent.

At least one person in Kentucky hopes Cigar runs his win streak to nine in the Hollywood Gold Cup on Sunday.

Alex Hassinger, who moved from California to Kentucky this year, was the original trainer of the 5-year-old and will be an interested observer when Cigar goes for another Grade I victory.

An assistant to Richard Lundy before taking over a string of horses for Allen and Madeleine Paulson, Hassinger, 34, had Cigar until the end of his 3-year-old season.

After the son of Palace Music finished 11th in the 1993 Hollywood Derby, he was sent east to be handled by trainer Bill Mott, given several months off and started to develop into the nation’s top handicap horse.

Hassinger, who still trains five horses for the Paulsons, is glad Cigar has blossomed.

“I’m very happy for the Paulsons,” he said from his Churchill Downs stable. “I’m thrilled that they have the best horse in the country.”

After finishing third in his debut on Feb. 21, 1993, Cigar returned to break his maiden nearly three months later in a six-furlong dirt race at Hollywood Park. He picked up several other checks later in the year on turf, beat older horses on the grass at Del Mar, then was second in the Volante Handicap that fall at Oak Tree.

“He showed some talent right from the start,” Hassinger said. “You have to have some talent to win so early. He was a very nice horse to be around and he was very professional.

“He was kind of a big, gangly horse. He had a very big frame, but he didn’t have a lot of mass on his frame.”

As a result, Cigar was switched to the turf, a surface on which he has only one victory since his maiden win.

“He wasn’t fully mature and we felt running on the grass would help him last longer,” said Hassinger, who trained the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies and Eclipse Award winner Eliza for the Paulsons. “He wasn’t a bad 3-year-old. He broke his maiden sprinting, beat older horses on the turf and was stakes-placed.”

The decision to ship Cigar to Mott was made because it was felt Eastern tracks would be kinder to the horse. Of course, the horse has also gotten older and grown into his body.

“I haven’t seen him up close, but [on television] he looks much larger,” Hassinger said. “He’s filled out the way it looked like he would.

“Sending him [east] was what was best for the horse. You have to understand that’s going to happen in this business. I’ve had a lot of nice horses that I’ve kept and others that went somewhere else.”

Among the handful of horses Hassinger trains for the Paulsons are a couple familiar to local fans--Ojai, a talented sprinter, and allowance competitor Turbie.

“I’m happy here,” he said. “I had lived in Kentucky before I went to California and it was a personal, not a business, decision for me to go back. This is where I wanted to live.”