LOS ALAMITOS : Dieting Way of Life for Didericksen

Tired of trying to lose weight on liquid diets? Worn out jumping around all day with Richard Simmons?

Well, worry no more, weight watchers, because here is that dreamed-of diet guaranteed to melt off the flab--the Kip Didericksen Sure-Fire Diet Plan.

Weight control is just another occupational necessity for most jockeys, but for Didericksen, who is 5 feet 9, it has become a way of life. For most people an extra pound or two means nothing more than tight slacks. For Didericksen, an extra pound means he is out of a job.

Quarter horse jockeys at Los Alamitos can weigh a maximum of 122, including riding equipment of boots, silks and saddle. That means Didericksen can weigh no more than 117 pounds.

“I’ve weighed 117 pounds every day for about as long as I can remember,” said Didericksen who, at 24, is in search of his second consecutive Los Alamitos summer season riding title.

To keep his weight at 117, Didericksen limits himself to 800 calories a day, usually consumed in one meal after he has finished riding that night’s program.

“I know it seems a strange time to eat, but I can’t get to sleep right away when I get home after the races, so I eat. I usually eat chicken or fish and it’s the only meal I eat all day long,” Didericksen said.

A physically demanding work schedule, in which Didericksen gallops 15 to 20 horses every morning, besides the nine or 10 nightly mounts at Los Alamitos, also helps him keep the weight down.

“I drink water during the day, but I even have to stop doing that around noon because I don’t want to have a lot of water weight when I go to the jock’s room at night,” he said. “If I drink too much water I have to sit in the sweat box and lose the weight and I hate that.”

This diet dedication has not been without rewards for Didericksen, who last year was named the nation’s leading quarter horse rider. He can earn an income well into six figures with another successful year in the saddle.

When the names of the top potential stakes stars were being thrown around at the start of the Los Alamitos summer season, Dashing Val’s wasn’t on the list. Sure, Dashing Val had been a champion during his 3-year-old year of 1988. But the son of Dash For Cash had not run since a disappointing 1989 summer campaign in which he was winless in six starts.

Now, though, Dashing Val is at or near the top of everyone’s stakes list after his smashing performance in the $25,000 Kaweah Bar Handicap on the first Saturday of the meeting.

Owned and trained by Blane Schvaneveldt, who bought the colt after his poor 1989 summer, Dashing Val won by one-length in the 350-yard Kaweah Bar Handicap on Saturday and his winning time of 17.60 seconds showed that this lifetime winner of more than $235,000 is back in top form.

Schvaneveldt, a 13-time summer training champion at Los Alamitos, does not like to talk about his charges. If he was surprised by Dashing Val’s performance coming off an eight-month layoff, he wasn’t about to admit it.

“I wouldn’t have run him if I didn’t think he was up to winning the race,” Schvaneveldt said. “He had been training awfully good and I figured he’d run a big race for us.”

Dashing Val’s move to the Schvaneveldt stable is something of a homecoming for the handsome sorrel stallion. Schvaneveldt’s daughter Brenda supervised Dashing Val’s breeding, and he was named after a close family friend, Val Tonks, a young jockey who was killed in a riding accident at Los Alamitos during the 1983 summer meeting.

Schvaneveldt sold Dashing Val as a yearling for $62,000, but said he had always hoped that someday he might see the colt return to his barn.

“It’s not like just another win,” Schvaneveldt said. “You’d have to say that it was pretty special for us.’

The $50,000-added Go Man Go Handicap on May 19 may be the next race for Dashing Val and, based on his performance in the Kaweah Bar Handicap, the 5-year-old figures to be the horse to beat.

Los Alamitos officials were pleased with the business at the Orange County track over opening weekend, two nights during which they had healthy increases in overall attendance and handle.

Total handle at the track on Friday night was an opening-night record $1,588,620, and Saturday night, $1,284,222 was wagered.

Those figures were up 23% from a year ago, thanks in great part to a major increase in the number of satellite betting locations.

Last year when the Los Alamitos summer meeting opened, nine southern California off-track betting locations were taking the Los Alamitos signal. Now, with the recent deregulation of the night signal throughout California, 21 satellite locations are offering betting on the Los Alamitos races.

On opening night last summer season, $197,335 was bet off-track. This year, $534,668 was wagered off-track.

“We were very pleased with the opening numbers,” said Don Galloway, the track’s executive manager. “The off-track numbers are nice, but we have to plan on working to keep our on-track figures from falling behind.”