LOS ALAMITOS : Schvaneveldt Gets Dash For Speed

What do you give the trainer who seems to have everything in the way of older horses?

Why, you give him a two-time national champion who has won 15 of her last 18 races and has earnings of more than $1 million.

Such a horse is the newest addition to the Blane Schvaneveldt stable. National champion Dash For Speed arrived at Los Alamitos from Texas on Friday.

Considered to be one of the top quarter horse mares to race in the last decade, the 5-year-old Dash For Speed has been sent to Los Alamitos this summer with one goal--the 1990 world champion title.

Owned by Bob Blakeman and Tom Bradbury, Dash For Speed has won seven Grade I stakes and as a 3-year-old became only the second horse in history to sweep the Ruidoso Downs series of the Kansas, Rainbow and All American Derbies.

Last year Dash For Speed won eight of nine starts, among them three Grade I stakes, and went over $1 million in earnings. But she never has won the world championship.

“It just kills us that this mare has never been world champion,” Blakeman said. ‘She has done everything we ever asked of her and we just feel that she deserves one last shot to be world champion.’

What cost Dash For Speed the title as a 3-year-old was a disastrous Los Alamitos winter campaign, during which she was beaten in both the Grade I Breeders Championship Classic and the Grade I Champion of Champions.

Last year, with a world championship all but certain, Dash For Speed was once again upset in the Breeders Championship Classic and the top honor went to See Me Do It.

“We’re going to run her this summer and then we’re going to run at Los Alamitos this winter and go after the Breeders Championship Classic and the Champion of Champions,” Blakeman said. “If she can win those two races, I know she’ll be world champion.”

That the owners of Dash For Speed even have the option to run the mare this summer is largely because of the new breeding technology in quarter horse racing.

A yearling produced by Dash For Speed would be worth more than $100,000 in today’s market, but instead of having to choose between racing or retirement to the breeding shed, Dash For Speed’s owners have taken advantage of embryo transfer technology, using a surrogate mare to carry Dash For Speed’s foal.

Earlier this spring, Dash For Speed was bred to the stallion Streakin Six at Phillips Ranch in Texas. Shortly afterward, the new embryo was transferred to the surrogate mare, which will carry the foal for the full 11-month term and give birth next spring.

“She really got here in good shape,” Schvaneveldt said of Dash For Cash. “She looks ready to run.”

The first stop on Dash For Speed’s summer schedule will probably be the Grade I Anne Burnett Invitational Handicap July 14.

“We’ll see how she’s doing, but that looks like where we’ll run her,” Schvaneveldt said.

Another race that will probably be on Dash For Speed’s summer schedule is the $100,000 Los Alamitos Championship on July 28. She won’t have to look far to find her main rival for that Grade I race.

Dashing Val, another 5-year-old Dash For Cash offspring, is stabled right next to Dash For Speed in Schvaneveldt’s barn and right now he looks to be the best older quarter horse in the country.

A winner of the Kaweah Bar Handicap and the Shue Fly Handicap in his first two starts of the year, Dashing Val made it three for three when he won the Grade I Go Man Go Handicap last Saturday night.

“I guess you’d have to say he’s been a nice surprise . . . ,” said Schvaneveldt, who bought Dashing Val last summer. “I’ve always thought he was fast, and he’s really shown it here.”

Schvaneveldt said after Dashing Val’s victory in the Go Man Go that the colt would be freshened until the Los Alamitos Championship, in which he probably will race Dash For Speed.

Tonight the trials for the $350,000 Grade I Kindergarten will be held with the best 2-year-olds on the grounds competing for the 10 final berths in that stake.

The finals of the Kindergarten will be held on June 2 and even though it’s early in the year, several young horses have established solid credentials.

Trainer Caesar Dominguez will send out Bay Meadows Futurity winner Takin on the Cash in tonight’s trials. A son of Dash For Cash, Takin On The Cash has been idle since his April victory in the Bay Meadows Futurity.

Trainer Bob Baffert has a pair of Kindergarten hopefuls--fillies Dash For Time and Miss Strikin Jet.

Dash For Time was a troubled fourth in the recent Leo Handicap, a race won by her stablemate Miss Strikin Jet.

Bloodlines might be on the side of Miss Strikin Jet in the Kindergarten trials. The filly is a half-sister of Ourautograph, last year’s Kindergarten winner.

Trainer Wayne Thompson will send out Four and Two in the trials off an impressive recent stakes victory at Los Alamitos.