Seeking the inside track

Maggi Moss is accustomed to the wide-open spaces of Iowa, not the traffic congestion she experienced while driving from Beverly Hills to Santa Anita Park in Arcadia on Friday afternoon -- the day before a three-day holiday weekend.

“I can’t believe this traffic,” the horse owner said on her cellphone as she drove on the 10 Freeway with her friend and former college roommate, Debbie Long of Lexington, Ky. “It took us forever just to get out of Beverly Hills.”

Moss had to explain her plight because her plan was to arrive at the racetrack around 2:30 p.m. for a newspaper interview and photo session, then make a guest appearance on the horse racing network HRTV at 5 p.m.

After arriving at Santa Anita just before 4 p.m., she said, “I could have driven from Des Moines to Chicago in the time it took me to get here.”

Moss, 51, who lives in Des Moines, may have been out of her element driving Southern California freeways, but she has shown she belongs in the male-dominated world of horse racing.

She is one of the three finalists for the Eclipse Award that will be presented tonight at the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons to North America’s horse owner of the year.

The other finalists are Canadian billionaire Frank Stronach, whose many properties include Santa Anita, and Sheik Hamdan bin Rashid al Maktoum, Dubai’s deputy ruler and minister of finance and industry.

Stronach is a five-time Eclipse Award winner for top breeder and a three-time winner as top owner.

This competition could be billed as the Iowa farm girl versus the rich guys.

Moss grew up in Des Moines, about five miles from where she now lives, but she lived on a farm for nine years after finishing her undergraduate work at the University of Kentucky. She said her father bought the farm to lure her back to Iowa to attend law school, and it worked. Moss has a law degree from Des Moines’ Drake University.

But Moss bristles when referred to as an Iowa farm girl.

“I’m nothing close to resembling a farm girl from Iowa,” she said. “I’ve lived a lot of life and been lots of places. I have all the fancy stuff and have extraordinarily expensive taste.

“The reality is, everything I have tackled from trial work to race horses has been in a man’s world, and I really just work harder than most.”

She may not like being called a farm girl, but with her Iowa roots, Moss puts on no airs, and is friendly and cheerful.

Moss, who has been a public defender, a trial lawyer and a prosecutor, was a partner in a Des Moines law firm until giving that up in 2006 to concentrate on horse racing.

Moss claimed her first horse for $25,000 in 1998. The horse won and set a track record at Oaklawn in Hot Springs, Ark. She now runs a stable of about 80 horses from her three-story home. Her horses are mostly claimers and 2-year-olds she has purchased.

She says the most she has spent on a horse is $85,000 -- “and that horse turned out to be a bust,” she adds.

She has been the leading owner at Iowa’s Prairie Meadows the last six years, and won owner titles at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans and Aqueduct in 2006, when she led the nation with 209 victories. Last year she won the owners title at Churchill Downs and ranked second in the nation with 196 victories. She ranked fourth in earnings with $4,225,437.

Not that her life has been all victories. Her father Phil Moss, who ran the Seeberg jukebox company, died along with her brother in a private plane crash in 1980. In 1989, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, but her perseverance got her through that and she says that the disease is now in remission.

Moss will attend her first Eclipse Awards tonight, and says, “I can’t tell you how excited I am. Some people dream about attending an Academy Awards. For me, it’s always been attending an Eclipse Awards.”

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Rafael Bejarano will sub for injured jockey Corey Nakatani aboard In Summation in today’s Grade II, $150,000 Palos Verdes Handicap.

Nakatani suffered a broken right collarbone in a training mishap at Hollywood Park on Saturday morning.

In Summation, winner of the Grade II El Conejo Handicap at Santa Anita on Jan. 1, will be a strong favorite in a field of seven. Midnight Lute earlier scratched from the Palos Verdes.

In Sunday’s featured race, the $79,700 San Pedro Stakes, Gayego, ridden by Mike Smith, scored a modest upset in the 6 1/2 -furlong race and paid $10.20 to win.

Favored Sea of Pleasure, who went out fast, finished second, 2 3/4 lengths behind.

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larry.stewart@latimes.com