Los Alamitos Champion of Champions : Cash Rate Scores His Fourth Consecutive Win

Cash Rate, a 5-year-old gelding whose owners tried to convert into a roping horse a couple of years ago, overtook the fast-breaking Dashs Dream at the halfway point and won the $200,000 Champion of Champions before about 7,000 fans Saturday night at Los Alamitos.

By winning one of quarter-horse racing’s most important races, Cash Rate may also have clinched the World Championship, the sport’s equivalent of horse of the year.

Cash Rate, ridden by James Lackey, won his fourth straight race and added his eighth win, to go with three seconds, out of 13 starts this year.

Dashs Dream, who had hoped to win the Champion of Champions for the second straight year, just as her sire, Dash for Cash, had done in 1976-77, instead suffered her second straight loss. Dashs Dream had won 12 straight and was favored to capture the World Championship before her fourth-place finish in the Griffin Directors Handicap two weeks ago.

Cash Rate, who was also sired by Dash for Cash, was timed in :21.31 for the 440 yards, third fastest time in the 14-year history of the Champion of Champions and fastest time ever for that distance under the lights at Los Alamitos.

Sent off as the favorite, Cash Rate paid $5.20, $3.60 and $3.20. Dashs Dream, who finished three-quarters of a length in front of Prissy Fein in what was a two-horse race, paid $4.40 and $3.20. Prissy Fein paid $3.80.

The rest of the order of finish was Indigo Illusion, Rise N High, Meganette, Eastex, Oh Snaz, Miss Jet Tonto and Heavenly, who unseated her jockey, Steve Harris, in the gate and delayed the start about two minutes.

“The extra time didn’t hurt my horse,” Lackey said. “It might have given him more time to settle down in the gate. The mare (Dashs Dream) broke super, but so did my horse, and I caught her at the gap and then pulled away.”

Danny Cardoza, who won the Champion of Champions with Dashs Dream last year, couldn’t fault this year’s race.

“She just got outrun,” Cardoza said. “The winner was the best horse. When he made his move, he just went right on by us. My mare might have needed a couple or three weeks to be completely ready for this race.”

The Griffin was Dashs Dream’s first start in more than three months and her trainer, Mike Robbins, had said before the Champion of Champions that she colicked (got stomach sickness) before she shipped from Texas to California for the race.

Cash Rate, owned by Anne and B.F. Phillips Jr. and Minnie Wood of Frisco, Tex., gave trainer Blane Schvaneveldt his third Champion of Champions win and his first since Lady Juno in 1980.

“He’s as good, and might be better, than the others,” Schvaneveldt said. “When I got him a year ago, he had earned $80 lifetime. Look at him now.”

Cash Rate’s $100,000 purse boosted his career earnings to $268,000. The gelding made only three starts as a 3-year-old and ran in only one race last year. He’s likely to be around for a while now--maybe as long as thoroughbred racing’s John Henry if he stays sound.