HARNESS RACING / LOS ALAMITOS : His Interest in the Outcome Quickly Soared

Lloyd Arnold wasn’t aware that he had a rooting interest in last Thursday’s California Breeders Championship for 2-year-old trotting fillies until the horses were into the first turn.

Arnold was on the phone while the field assembled behind the starting gate and didn’t notice that his filly, Pert Aries, was part of the field until substitute track announcer Jim Crawford called her name.

Then, he got interested. Pert Aries, who was driven by Jim Grundy, took the lead entering the final turn and held off the previously undefeated Eggwhite to win the $16,600 race by a nose for her first victory in four starts.

“I didn’t know she was racing,” said Arnold, who owns 25% of Los Alamitos and serves as general manager of the harness meeting. “I was busy all day and . . . on the phone when I saw the race go off and heard Crawford call her name.”

Pert Aries, purchased as a yearling by Arnold, raced for the first time Sept. 3 at Los Alamitos and finished third behind Eggwhite. After going off-stride in a mid-September race, she was second, a length behind Eggwhite, on Oct. 8 in a division of the sire stakes.

“The main thing is to keep a 2-year-old trotting,” Arnold said. “Jim had told me that she was coming along, but she wasn’t set where she could stay (trotting for the entire mile) yet. (Thursday’s race) looked like the same race as (Oct. 8), but she was more settled.”

Eggwhite won her first start at Sacramento in mid-June. At Los Alamitos, she won her first three starts of the fall.

In Thursday’s race, she took the early lead but was overtaken by Bubbette and fell to third halfway through the mile. In the final turn, she moved back to second and almost caught Pert Aries in the stretch.

“I was disappointed she got beat, but pleased with her race,” said Frank Sherren, who drives and trains Eggwhite. “She raced well. The last quarter-mile was (timed) in 30 2/5 (seconds) and she just got beat. If they’d gone the (first) half-mile faster, she might have won.

“It’s hard to stay undefeated. (Thursday) was the first time she’d been pressed since her first start.”

Sherren indicated that Eggwhite would race once more at Los Alamitos this meeting before taking the winter off. Pert Aries will also have another start at this meeting.

Gabriele Bernat ended a yearlong winless streak on Wednesday, driving two horses she owns to victory in claiming races. Both horses, Marje The Ripper and Blue Blade, as well as another Bernat-owned horse, are entered in Thursday’s program.

Bernat is one of the few female drivers at Los Alamitos and only drives horses she owns, most of them low-level claimers. The two victories ended a winless spell that dates to last year, when she was at Cloverdale Raceway in Surrey, British Columbia, where she races during the winter.

After this meeting, she will head back to Cloverdale, where muddy tracks are a normal winter occurrence. Both of her victories on Wednesday were over a track dulled by afternoon rains.

“I do well in the mud,” she said. “I guess you could call me a mudder.”

Bernat, who grew up in Germany, discovered harness racing in the early 1970s when she visited Bay Meadows, near San Francisco. She has driven occasionally in California since then, but has always concentrated on driving her own horses.

This year, for example, she has driven only 33 times.

“I have a lot of patience and I know after 20 years that if I take my time and have patience that the outcome is usually better.”

Nighty Night, who won the $25,000 California Breeders Championship for 3-year-old pacing fillies Friday, will be retired at the end of the season, trainer Rick Plano said.

Plano said that Friday’s muddy track helped Nighty Night, who has suffered from minor injuries throughout her career. Last year, she was the leading 2-year-old pacing filly at Los Alamitos, winning four of seven starts, but this year has shared the spotlight with Uppity Broad.

Nighty Night has won six of 24 starts this year, but before Friday hadn’t had a victory since a division of the sires stakes at Sacramento in late May. Plano said the Denali filly will race through the end of the meeting and then be bred to Winning Night.

“She’s the best (3-year-old filly) in my mind, but she’s been lame--a lot of little problems have added up to big problems,” Plano said. “The track seemed to help here because she has sore feet. I’m glad she won one of the big ones.

“She was such a good 2-year-old and this year it’s been Croghan’s horse (Uppity Broad) most of the time.”

Plano also drives the filly, who is owned by his wife, Maryann, in partnership with Nick Kareotes and Paul Reddam.

Reddam, of Newport Beach, heads a group seeking next year’s Los Alamitos lease, which will be vacated in November by Arnold.

Although potential leaseholders have until Dec. 1 to reach an agreement with track owners, there are two events that probably will speed the process. The Pacesetter yearling sale is Saturday and without assurance of 1993 racing, the sale will have little chance of succeeding. Then, too, the final night of racing, Nov. 14, is approaching, and without a future here many horsemen will begin making arrangements elsewhere.

Most of the horsemen, however, are California-based and indicated their willingness to stay in a meeting with Reddam on Oct. 17. Reddam hopes to meet with track owners Arnold, Chris Bardis and Edward Allred this week.

Only 11 races have been scheduled for tonight’s and Thursday’s programs, a reflection of the small number of harness horses stabled at Los Alamitos.

The only notable race on Wednesday is a $5,800 invitational trot that features a field of six. Two races from Garden State Park in New Jersey will be simulcast each night.

Fred Kuebler, director of racing, said the backstretch includes 425 horses with three weeks left in the meeting.