Allen Paulson, one of the former owners of the legendary thoroughbred racehorse Cigar, is on the fast track again. Paulson, developer of the Del Mar Country Club and its surrounding golf course estates in Rancho Santa Fe, has made an offer to buy the Riviera and the Four Queens casino hotels in Las Vegas and the Gold River Casino Hotel in Laughlin.

    If all goes well, the $75 million acquisition of Riviera Holdings Corp. will close this summer, reports the Las Vegas News Bureau.

    Paulson is well known in San Diego for his horse racing passion and his part-ownership in the superstar Cigar. Paulson also owns Zede, a recent winner of the Tampa Bay Derby. In January, Paulson and his wife, Madeleine, along with the owner of the now defunct Golden Eagle Insurance Company John Mabee and his wife, Betty, were honored at the annual San Diego Hall of Champions dinner. The Mabees own the successful Golden Eagle horse breeding ranch just east of Ramona.

    What is less known about Paulson is his 25 percent ownership of Full House Resorts, a company headquartered on High Bluff Drive, just across Interstate 5 from Del Mar. Full House Resorts has casino operations in South Dakota and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Former Chrysler Corp. Chairman Lee Iacocca owns 10 percent of Full House and Bill McComas, a Florida and California golf course community developer, owns another 10 percent.

    According to the Las Vegas News Bureau, Paulson will try to acquire the hotels through Full House Resorts, and although he is chairman of the company, his partner may not agree to the deal. In case they do not agree, Paulson has told gaming officials in Nevada that he is prepared to go forward with the acquisition on his own. When contacted by San Diego Metropolitan, Paulson declined to comment on his plans for Riviera Holdings.

    The Riviera was built on the Las Vegas strip in 1955 and was a glamorous home to many top-flight entertainers. In an era when Las Vegas lounge shows were the incubator for much of the young musical and comedy talent in America, the Riviera presented budding stars such as Ike and Tina Turner and The Righteous Brothers. Since those glory years the property has declined somewhat and is now out-glitzed by new resorts like the MGM, Mirage, Excalibur and Treasure Island.

    The Four Queens is a downtown "glitter gulch" property and from the beginning appealed to a less affluent clientele. Fremont Street has been a Las Vegas gaming venue since before the turn of the century, except for a brief time in the 1930s when gambling in Nevada was temporarily illegal. In the past several years downtown hotel owners have restructured Fremont Street to give back some of the allure it held before the glamorization of the Strip in the 1950s.

    As a few other San Diego entrepreneurs have discovered, involvement in the Nevada gambling industry is always exciting, if not terrifyingly so. But Paulson is used to the unexpected, as his experience with two-time Horse of the Year Cigar indicates.

    One of the most exciting horses on the track for several seasons, Cigar retired in 1996 after finishing third in the Breeders' Cup Classic. After turning down a $30 million offer from Japanese investors for Cigar, Paulson sold 75 percent of the racehorse to Coolmore Farms of Ireland for about $25 million. It was intended that Cigar would stand at Ashford Stud, Coolmore's American division. Ashford is adjacent to Paulson's Brookside Farm in Versailles, Ky.

    The buyers priced Cigar's stud fee at $75,000 per live foal. He was expected to cover approximately 100 mares in 1997 alone.

    Alas, Cigar was a dud stud. The 7-year-old was bred to 34 mares, none of which became pregnant. Fortunately, the horse's fertility was insured. The insurance policy required that Cigar be bred to 20 mares twice and sire at least 12 foals to be considered fertile. Since that did not happen, the insurance company agreed to pay off. Paulson says he plans to buy the 7-year-old back again, although Cigar will not be allowed to race.

    Paulson told ABC Radio Sports, "I want to provide a good home for the horse for the rest of his life. He gave a lot to me and my family and the world."

    But that was not the end of the story. Once word got out about the cloning of Dolly the sheep in Britain, a sports writer at the New York Post suggested perpetuating Cigar's glory by having him cloned. Paulson said he would give scientists a little patch of the horse if they wanted to experiment, but didn’t expect to come up with another great galloper.

    And of course the Jockey Club, governing body of North American thoroughbred breeding and racing, would have something to say about the matter. Most likely, "No Cigar." Horses produced through artificial insemination are banned from competition.

    Janet Lowe is author of several investment books, including Value Investing Made Easy (McGraw-Hill) and Warren Buffett Speaks (John Wiley & Sons).