LOS ALAMITOS : The Desomers Are Winning Team

Steve and Vickie Desomer have given new meaning to the term coupled interest at Los Alamitos this season.

The husband-and-wife driver-and-trainer team is firmly entrenched in the top 10 with three weeks remaining in the harness racing meeting.

Vickie is 10th in the trainer standings with 27 victories for the Desomer stable. Steve, who occasionally catch-drives for other barns, is ninth in the driver standings with 35 winners.

Steve and Vickie met at Sacramento in 1975. Steve drove during the harness meeting there, and Vickie was an outrider who led horses onto the track for the pre-race parade. It was love at first post.

“A mutual friend kept dragging him over,” Vickie said. “He was real shy despite what people like to think.”

They were married four years ago, and Steve chose Vickie as trainer of the stable for the first time last year.

“It would be a bigger thrill if the winning percentage were a little higher,” Vickie said of her 11% success.

Steve said: “Without her, I think I’d pack my bags and go home. She does everything--all the regulation and coordination, the bookkeeping and paying the bills. She does all the PR work and talks to the owners. She’s a lot busier than I am.”

Their usual weekly work schedule during the Los Alamitos meeting involves six mornings of training and five evenings of racing.

“I get here about 7:45 in the morning,” Vickie said. “Steve goes to the doughnut shop, reads the newspaper and gets here about an hour and a half later.

“I don’t do as much tracking as he does. I organize the sets, deal with the grooms and vets, do the entering and scheduling. Steve just sits behind them in the morning.”

Vickie’s “morning” ends about 1:30 p.m. After a five-hour break, she returns to the track and can often be there until after midnight if one of their horses is in the last race on a weekend program.

While Steve concentrates on driving and spends time between races in the drivers’ room, Vickie needs to be alert in the stable to oversee the grooms and make sure proper bikes are used and equipment changes are made. The Desomers have about 35 standardbreds stabled at Los Alamitos.

Vickie, an Air Force “brat” who saw much of the country during her youth, likes nothing better than a relaxing Sunday at home. “I like to stay around home, cook dinner, sit down at the table and pretend to be normal,” she said. She and Steve each have a teen-ager from a previous marriage.

Steve, 53, has driven more than 2,000 winners and earned more than $8 million in purses. Born in Belgium, he moved to Canada when he was 21 and worked as a sharecropper on a tobacco farm in Tillsonburg in Ontario.

There, Etienne Desomer acquired the first name Steve for life. “The Canadian people there had so much trouble pronouncing it--they would call me ‘Etchin’ or ‘Itchin’--I decided it would be easier to use my middle name, Stephaan,” he said. “When I go back there and visit my Belgian friends, they still call me Etienne.”

While in Canada, Desomer bought a dairy farm in 1964. “I purchased a couple of broodmares and then a couple of trotters to have something to do between planting and harvesting seasons,” he said.

In 1968 he went to Michigan, first working at the United Stock Farm, then as a groom for Canadian driver Bev Kingston.

In 1969, Desomer bought a harness horse named Daisy’s Bomb, which won six consecutive races. Desomer took out a driver’s license later that year, drove his first race at The Meadows in Pennsylvania and finished third with Daisy’s Bomb. He won with the horse in his next start.

After competing at several tracks in the Midwest and East, including Detroit, Batavia Downs, Buffalo Raceway, The Meadows, Toledo, Aurora Downs and Fairmount Park, Desomer moved west.

“I came to Hollywood Park on Sept. 7, 1970,” Desomer said. “I bought three horses, pooled my money and kept buying more. I started driving for real in 1973.”

Since then, Desomer has become one of the leading standardbred horsemen in California. His stars include Desmond, a homebred who earned almost $500,000; Dante Jay, the only California-bred to win the American Trotting Classic; Dante’s Endeavor, who earned about $300,000, and Sovereign Mine, who won 13 consecutive races last year and was sold to European interests last month.

Steve and Vickie both yearn for life on the farm. They own a 205-acre farm in Galt, 18 miles South of Sacramento, and have about 150 standardbreds.

“I’d like to have a smaller stable and slow down,” Steve said. “I would like to farm and train horses and send them to the track. I’d like to keep training but not come out at night. Maybe in a few years.”

Desomer Stables, Inc., owns about 30 broodmares and two stallions, Armbro Flint and Nero’s Story, at the Galt farm. Steve has completed a new home there and has a landing strip for his second passion, aviation. He flies two planes, a Cessna four-seater and a Piper Cub J-3 two-seater. “Some day, I would like to build my own plane. It would probably take four or five years.”

“I’ve always wanted a garden,” Vickie said. “I’ve never had time to have one.”

Can year-round life on the farm be far away?

Harness Racing Notes

California Sire Stakes races for 3-year-old trotters and pacers will highlight the Los Alamitos programs the next four nights. Each offers a $20,000 purse. Eminem, the top California-bred sophomore pacer, seeks his eighth consecutive victory. He faced older horses not restricted to California breeding in a $7,500 leg of the Fireball Series last Saturday and won in 1:57 2/5. Seemingly trapped in midstretch, Eminem changed direction and found an opening along the rail. Eminem, by Samore-Emily’s Beauty, is trained and driven by Rick Plano for Robert Dellas of San Francisco.

Lepton, who has dominanted the sophomore filly pacing ranks, will seek her seventh consecutive victory for the Ross Croghan Stable and owners Michael and Billie Schwartz of Santa Ana. “Lepton means a very small particle, like a molecule that is moving very quickly,” Michael said. She was named by breeder Ed Lunde. “She was extremely nervous when we first bought her,” Billie said. “We bought her a goat, Dorothy, to keep her company for about six months.”

Dare You To appears to have taken over as the dominant horse in the invitational pacing ranks. The 5-year-old son of Abercrombie led all the way in the $15,000 feature Saturday night and drew off in the stretch to record a 1:54 mile. Driven by Stan Bayless, Dare You To clocked :27 4/5 opening and closing quarters. It was the third victory in four starts for Dare You To, who is trained by David Bittle for owner Joseph Alflen of Redondo Beach.

Flight Strip, who won the slower division of a Fireball Series leg in 1:57 4/5 Saturday, will go for his third series victory of the meeting. The 4-year-old gelding, driven by Gene Vallandingham and trained by Stacy Black, has already won the California Gold and Stanton Series. . . . Trainer Mark Harder has shipped in six Kenwood Bloodstock horses from New Zealand with the intention of selling them.