LOS ALAMITOS : Some Good Breaks From The Starting Gate

The Starting Gate made a believer out of his driver-trainer, Rick Plano, last Thursday when the 2-year-old colt won his fourth consecutive race, beating older horses by six lengths in 1:56 and tying a Los Alamitos record for juvenile pacers.

On Aug. 1, Plano drove the colt to a 9 1/2-length victory in a $10,000 Sires Stakes for 2-year-old pacers at Sacramento in 1:54 4/5, the fastest mile by a 2-year-old at that track.

Even though the victory was The Starting Gate’s third in a row, Plano wasn’t convinced of the colt’s speed. He kept The Starting Gate on the sidelines until last Thursday, when he faced older pacers for the second time.

The Starting Gate took the lead early and pulled away on the final turn to win by six lengths, tying Red Star Fantasy’s 1989 track record. It was the perfect prep race for the California Breeders Stakes series, which starts this week for 2- and 3-year-old pacers and trotters of both sexes.

“He had to put in two good performances to make the trainer think he’s a good colt,” Plano said. “He impressed me (Thursday) night. The time compared to the rest (of the races) was the fastest by two seconds and he jumped up and did it fairly easily.”

Plano bought The Starting Gate last summer for $28,000 at a yearling sale at Los Alamitos. The colt is owned by Plano’s wife, Maryann, Nick Kareotes and Kenneth Brandyberry. Kareotes, who has six horses in Plano’s barn, also owns Nightly Night, one of the top 3-year-old pacing fillies in California. Brandyberry, an Orange County restaurateur, is one of the few Californians to own both harness and quarter horses.

The Starting Gate took longer to develop this summer than some of the colts and geldings he faced in early races, but made up for it in July. He began his winning streak on July 11 and has since won four races, including two stakes. He is expected to start Saturday night in the Breeders Stakes.

“He was a little behind the rest of the colts (this summer),” Plano said. “They’d qualified by the time he started. A lot of the big colts don’t make it at 2, they make it at 3. We just took it week-to-week.”

The Breeders Stakes begin tonight with the trotting colts. The 2-year-old division is scheduled for a non-betting race at 6:45 p.m., while the 3-year-olds, including recent stakes winners Star Hangover and David’s Storm, race in the ninth.

The trotting fillies are on display tonight, including the 2-year-old Eggwhite, who went undefeated in four starts at Sacramento this summer.

Purses were cut 20% Friday as a result of lower-than-expected handle figures through the first 10 days of the meeting.

The purse structure was based on an average handle of $900,000, but the average has been $638,353. The handle has yet to hit $1 million, which it did consistently during the winter-spring harness meeting. Last Thursday, the handle was to $361,215, the lowest handle of the year at Los Alamitos.

When compared with the winter-spring meeting, the average mutuel handle is down 30.9%. The biggest drop has come from the Northern California satellites, which offer night wagering from the Sacramento thoroughbred meeting on weeknights through Sept. 7.

The purse cut was across the board. Invitational handicaps for pacers carried $12,000 purses on the first two weekends and $10,000 on Saturday. The cut was deeper for claiming horses, such as $3,000--the lowest claiming level--purses which went from $3,800 to $2,400.

Competition from nightly quarter horses races at Hollywood Park are certainly having an effect, but Lloyd Arnold, the general manager of the Los Alamitos Racing Assn., which conducts harness racing in California, blames the economy and the budget stalemate.

“I think we have to wait a couple of weeks to see (how the meet will turn out),” Arnold said. “I think until they get the budget straightened out, all businesses will be hurt. I don’t know what effect the quarter horses are having.

“The economy is just tough,” he said. “The state’s not paying lots of people. The quarter horses will be out (of Hollywood Park) in eight weeks and we’ll have three weeks to ourselves.”

Arnold acknowledged that the track set its sights to high when it established the opening purse structure, but said $800,000 might be an achievable goal for the meeting. That is well below the average last spring of $933,320, when harness was the only night racing in the area, but higher than the 1991 handle of $787,668, which competed with quarter horse racing from Bay Meadows.

When Nick Sodano decided to transfer his stable to Los Alamitos this summer, he began looking for a trotter who could fill the stable’s need for an invitational horse.

Sodano, who was based at the Meadowlands, didn’t have to look far. He found Table Card, an 8-year-old horse, who competed with conditioned horses at the Meadowlands with modest results, but raced in the invitational class at Los Alamitos in 1991.

Table Card, who was bred in Australia, had little trouble readjusting to the easier California competition. He was first and second in two starts at Los Alamitos in August, including a win victory in the invitational class on Aug. 26.

He is the probable favorite for tonight’s fourth race, an $8,000 invitational against First Down, Robbie Hest, Captain Paul and Theora Barnum, whom he lost to on Aug. 14.