Quarter Horse Racing at Los Alamitos : Chingaderos Needed Some Special Attention to Get Ready for Race

There are many reasons why Chingaderos is a favorite in tonight’s $125,000 Breeders’ Championship Classic at Los Alamitos Race Course.

There’s the anonymous chiropractor who cracks his back, for instance. And there’s the aspiring country music star, a former Miss Stanton, who sings him to sleep.

And if we’re talking back to basics, Chingaderos is a no-show on planet Earth altogether if Carol Cooper doesn’t make like a Musketeer with a pitchfork five years ago.

What is here and known is that Chingaderos is a 4-year old gelding, who has earned more than $600,000 in his career. This summer, however, that career appeared to be just about over.

Two years ago, Chingaderos fell at Bay Meadows in San Mateo. He ran inconsistently afterward, looking impressive in one race, then hobbling through the next.

His back remained sore for nearly two years. John Cooper, Chingaderos’ owner and trainer, describes pressing his hand to the horse’s back and hearing, “the moan of an old man.”

Cooper tried every veterinarian and every reasonable suggestion for a cure. But nothing seemed to work. When a jockey told him the horse was “running as far as he could grit his teeth,” Cooper had heard and seen enough and decided to put Chingaderos’ out to pasture for a year. That was July.

“The horse didn’t owe me anything,” he said. “He had done so much for me. I thought I’d give him a year off and then see if he could come back. If not, that would be the end of it.”

In the meantime, Cooper was having trouble with his own back. While getting treatment from his chiropractor, he wished out loud that his horse could find the same relief. The chiropractor told him he could help the horse.

The chiropractor--he asked that his name not be used--put a rope around the horse’s neck and led him about, twisting and turning Chingaderos as he walked.

There were several small cracks heard as the horse twisted. Then, as Cooper put it, there was “the sound of a tree branch breaking.”

A loud silence followed. Cooper, believing his horse’s back had just been broken, turned to the chiropractor and said: “You’ve killed my horse.”

Actually, the horse was feeling better than he had in two years. His demeanor improved, as did his appetite. The back was no longer sore.

“It was a 190-degree turnaround,” Cooper said.

And for you geometry buffs, you know that’s saying something.

Chingaderos has run three times since his back treatment and has won two of the three races. The Breeders’ Championship Classic he will run in is the centerpiece of the first Quarter Horse Breeders’ Classics, with first post at 7:30.

The Breeders’ Classics is a series of eight stakes races designed along the same lines of the thoroughbreds’ Breeders’ Cup--only with a lot less money and fewer fans.

Cooper has a house on half an acre in Stanton, and a ranch in Hemet. He and his wife, Carol, the one with the pitchfork, met while growing up in Idaho.

They have been together through better and worse at the track. Things were never worse than five years ago, when a mare named Momma Said Win, Chingaderos’ mother, fell at Bay Meadows, shattering her left knee. As quickly as they could, John and Carol got the horse back to its stable.

“I drove the truck back and John stayed with the horse,” Carol said. “He put the horse in its barn and then he told me not to go in. That it was just too bad to look at.

“But I went in anyway. It was bad, the bone was sticking right out. But she was as calm as could be. She just stood there on three legs, eating. I said to myself she must be OK if she’s eating.”

Meanwhile, the track veterinarians had informed John that X-rays were unnecessary and that the horse should be destroyed immediately. The vet walked out to get the lethal injection, then walked back to see Carol guarding the horse with a pitchfork.

“I told them I’d stab the first man who tried to put that horse to sleep,” she said.

So, Cooper worked out a deal with Momma Said Win’s owner, who also wanted the horse destroyed. Cooper said he would take the mare to his own vet, foot the bill for the treatment, and, if she survived, take over ownership.

She did survive, Cooper took over ownership and sent Momma Said Win out to Hemet where her first baby was none other than Chingaderos.

“Ugliest baby you’ve ever seen,” Carol said. “His momma didn’t even like the looks of him.”

But Michelle, the Coopers’ daughter, did. Michelle, a former Miss Stanton who Carol says will be leaving soon for Nashville to seek her fortune as an entertainer, walks Chingaderos every morning to keep his back loose.

According to Carol, whenever the horse is restless, Michelle cradles his head in her arms and sings, and very soon after the horse is asleep.

That may not be the best sign for someone who hopes to bring ‘em to their feet someday at the Grand Ole Opry, but it suits Chingaderos’ supporting cast just fine.