HORSE RACING LOS ALAMITOS : He Saves His Best for the Best

Don’t look for Mickey DiFranco Jr. on the driving leaders list at Los Alamitos this season, but put him in the sulky and tell him it’s a stakes race and somehow he’ll find his way to the winner’s circle.

DiFranco, who has started just two more races than leading driver Joe Anderson has won (48-46), has put on a clinic in winning races the last three weeks - especially stakes races. The 46-year-old DiFranco has piloted five of his charges into the winner’s circle in his last 18 starts, but he is an incredible 3-of-4 in stakes races during that span.

“You just seem to drive a little harder when there’s big money on the line,” DiFranco said from his barn at Los Alamitos. “Some people, it (the big stakes purses) doesn’t bother them. They don’t get nervous. I don’t feel any different if I’m driving for $2,000 or $30,000. But, it’s exciting when you win.”

And DiFranco has found a way to win two stakes elimination heats and three stakes finals despite that fact that he only had one favorite among the five.

The New York native may have saved his biggest stakes victory for last weekend. Catch driving for trainer Lou Pena, DiFranco took Positron, a horse that seemed grossly overmatched, and stuck his neck in front of heavily-favored Denali’s Thor at the wire to win the $33,200 Breeders Championship for 3-year-old pacing colts and geldings.

Positron had raced no faster than 1:57 at Los Alamitos and had a best winning time of only 1:58 on the mile oval at Cal Expo, but DiFranco buried both those marks when Positron’s nose tripped the teletimer in 1:54 4/5.

“He’s a nice horse,” DiFranco said. “Lou Pena trains him and Andrew Taylor owns him. I just figured I’d sit in with him. I figured he had one big brush at the end and we’d try to get a second-over trip. He went a super mile.

“It looked like coming around the last turn nobody would catch (Denali’s Thor). He (Positron) hung on good. He’s got one helluva brush on him. He’s a nice horse to drive, just like a Cadillac.”

His other two stakes winners have proved to be less than Cadillacs, but with DiFranco at the reins both made it to the wire first.

Roan Spirit, whom DiFranco’s wife owns half along with Dr. Gerald Kruglik, pulled a mild upset when he hit the jackpot with a 6-length victory in the $25,000 California Gold Series final in a lifetime best of 1:54 3/5. Roan Spirit made a slight break just before the start of the race, but recovered in time to outpace a very competitive eight-horse field.

Outside of a smattering of success with pacers like Roan Spirit and Positron, most of DiFranco’s driving success has come behind the likes of champion trotters Eastridge Star, and A Su Gusto. DiFranco and A Su Gusto still hold the track record for 2-year-old trotters at both Los Alamitos and Cal Expo.

U Bu Go is the latest in the string of stakes winning trotters out of the DiFranco barn. U Bu Go is a 3-year-old colt owned by Dr. Kruglik, and has won six of 20 starts in 1990 while racking up earnings of over $50,000. If DiFranco can keep U Bu Go on stride, the colt can keep up with the best of the 3-year-olds on the track. He proved this on Sept. 20 when under DiFranco’s urging he tracked down California’s top 3-year-old, Capital Game, at the wire to win the $20,000 California Sire Stake.

DiFranco could just as easily have been a career farmer as a harness driver. Growning up in upstate New York, DiFranco’s father, Mickey Sr., owned three farms with dairy and beef cattle. But the older DiFranco bought 12 broodmares when Mickey Jr. was “just a kid” and began racing them a Batavia and Buffalo in New York. DiFranco had to make a decision - farming or racing?

“When I got a little older and out of school, I went with the horses,” DiFranco said. “I got away from the farm. Milking the cows was too tough.” Bet he doesn’t miss getting up at 3 a.m. either.

After training and driving in New York and Canada for a few years, DiFranco came to California in 1972 with Jack Bailey and for the most part hasn’t left since.

“Jack wanted me to come out with him. He wanted me to train and drive at Bay Meadows and Sacramento,” DiFranco said. “In the winter he’d go back and leave about 15 horses with me.

“I think this is one of the toughest places in the country to race horses. There are a lot of guys who have come out here who say they won’t come back.” Except for a few seasonal trips back east, DiFranco has been a part of the California harness colony for almost 20 years. “I like it here,” DiFranco said. “The money is good, but the weather keeps you here.

“In Windsor (Canada) and Batavia, the winters are too brutal.”

DiFranco may not be winning races by the gross here at Los Alamitos, but he is winning the big ones. And it sure beats the alternative - shoveling snow in the dark to milk the cows.