LOS ALAMITOS : Jenuine Joins Living Hall of Fame

Preston H. (Pres) Jenuine stands only 5 feet 7, but he is looked up to as a giant in the history of harness racing.

An executive with Western Harness for nearly 40 years, he was to management what Joe O’Brien was to driving and Roy Shudt was to announcing.

Jenuine, 81, earned the highest honor in the sport this year when he was elected to harness racing’s Living Hall of Fame by the U.S. Harness Writers Assn.

Jenuine and current driving stars John Campbell and Bill O’Donnell will become members of the hall during formal induction ceremonies at Goshen, N.Y., July 7. O’Donnell is the son-in-law of John McGregor, a Los Alamitos-based trainer.

Jenuine was honored Tuesday night at Los Alamitos by the California chapter of the writers’ association and will receive similar treatment April 7 at the national group’s annual awards banquet in New Jersey. After moving from the Midwest in 1947, Jenuine helped to put California harness racing on the map at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park. He began as a paddock and patrol judge, became racing secretary and moved up to general manager, vice president and director of racing.

A creative innovator and respected spokesman, Jenuine established the American Pacing and Trotting Classics and the L.K. Shapiro Stakes. He also introduced new systems of race classification and stakes payment schedules and was responsible for the plastic wheel disc, a major safety breakthrough.

“He’s the most appropriately named human being I’ve ever met,” said Stan Bergstein, executive vice president of the Harness Tracks of America and former Western Harness publicist. “There is not a phony bone in Pres Jenuine’s body.

“He and (Hall of Fame driver) Del Miller are much alike. They are both out of small-town rural backgrounds, and both are unchanged guys. Success never changed them.

“Pres always had a constant temperament and never lost his youthful exuberance. The zenith of my career were the golden days at Hollywood Park and Santa Anita. They had great horses, great meets and afternoon racing. The sport was never again like that. It was Pres’ era.”

Jenuine was a United States Trotting Assn. director for 30 years, a Harness Tracks of America director for 25 years and a director of such organizations as the Hambletonian Society, Grand Circuit and Hall of Fame of the Trotter.

“He had as many friends as anybody in the business,” said Jack Williams, a Los Alamitos steward and former driver. “He was as interested in the back side as the front side and thought as much of grooms as of owners. He could rub elbows with grooms as well as governors. When horsemen based at Del Mar left for the East, Pres would have a dinner for the ‘Del Mar Widows.’ ”

A native of Greenup, Ill., population 1,400, Jenuine first learned about standardbred racing during a county fair there. He attended Milliken College in Decatur, Ill., and was elected to its Athletic Hall of Fame after quarterbacking the football team, playing outfield on the baseball team and running the 880 and mile on the track team.

After college, he entered track administration in 1932 by forming the Topline Circuit and Illinois Colt Stakes. He became the first secretary and general steward of the Illinois Harness Racing Commission and opened Maywood Park, Aurora Downs and Fairmount Park in 1946-48. He also worked at other tracks in Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, New York and Maryland through 1953.

He ventured into breeding and ownership and was part of the Twilight Farm Stable that included Buzzie Bavasi and Dr. Robert Kerlan.

Jenuine has lived at La Costa since 1982 and plays golf nearly every day. “I still go back quite a bit to Lexington and the Hambletonian and Adios,” he said.

Jenuine is skeptical about the future of the sport. “I’m kind of pessimistic on all racing,” Jenuine said. “There is competition with the lottery, and people are getting too greedy.

“It used to be people went for the horses and drivers, and now it’s a numbers game. Heck, I remember when everybody was against putting in the daily double and getting a ninth race.”

Lloyd Arnold, president and general manager of Los Alamitos, said he hopes to expand trifecta wagering to a maximum of 12 betting interests in a race by next week. Trifecta wagering began at Los Alamitos Friday with 10 interests, the most the toteboard was equipped for. There are 1,320 combinations in a 12-horse field, 600 more than in a 10-horse field.

Arnold was satisfied with $77,000 trifecta pools last Friday and Saturday, although total handle on the programs did not reflect gains. The handle was $1,244,767 Friday, a slight gain over $1,236,689 the previous Friday, and $1,181,480 Saturday, a dip from $1,317,402 on a promotion night the previous Saturday.

With 12 betting interests in a race, nine horses would leave from the front tier, with three trailers behind.

A popular bet for many years in other states and Canada, the trifecta has had a checkered past and been linked to several race-fixing scandals. Only last month, Bruce Munn, Buffalo Raceway’s general manager, suspended all the drivers in a suspicious trifecta race for the remainder of the meeting after a near-riot in the grandstand.

In the Feb. 16 race, a pace for cheap claimers, the three favorites missed the board, and 24-1, 7-1 and 44-1 shots finished 1-2-3. When the trifecta returned an unusually low $377--the exacta in the race paid $266--the crowd erupted. A computer printout of the race disclosed an unusual betting pattern and prompted an investigation by the New York State Racing and Wagering Board.

Los Alamitos Notes

Several North American horsemen have been hit hard by recent rulings. In New Jersey, Tom DeVitis was suspended for six months for an “unsatisfactory drive” at Freehold, and Donald Dancer, another driver in the race, was excluded by the track. In Quebec, Mario Baillargeon, Canada’s second-leading driver in victories last year, was suspended indefinitely after failing a drug test, and leading Blue Bonnets trainer Jean Tourijny was suspended for five years for possessing a syringe in the paddock. In Kentucky, driver Bobby Wilson was given a mandatory life suspension after a second positive drug test.

There will be plenty of experience going for the Joe Lighthill barn Thursday in a California Sire Stakes 3-year-old filly trot when Lighthill, 62, drives Capricious Stephi and Doug Ackerman, 63, guides stablemate Star of Mariah. Both began driving during their teens. Lighthill has won eight races at the meeting, all with trotters. . . . Actress Annette Funicello, wife of trainer-driver Glen Holt, was the hostess for a group of 40 homeless children Tuesday at Disneyland as part of a joint venture between Los Alamitos and Disneyland.

Nothing Ventured, who won 10 consecutive trotting races last fall at Los Alamitos, has returned to the Nicol Tremblay stable from the East. . . . The finals of the Platinum and Gold Pacing Series are scheduled Friday and Saturday nights.