LOS ALAMITOS : Victory 4,500 Elusive for Kerr

A few years ago, when driver Terry Kerr won his 4,000th harness race, the feat came as a surprise to him. He was driving at Windsor Raceway in Canada and wasn’t aware of the achievement until he saw the crowd of family and friends in the winner’s circle.

Since then, Kerr has continued a habit of winning more than 100 races a year. Consequently, he is on the verge of his 4,500th victory. And this time, it won’t be a surprise if he achieves what only 22 others have.

He started last week with 4,496 victories and appeared ready to hit the 4,500 mark after winning two of the first three races on last Wednesday’s program. But he was winless for the rest of the week, in 23 drives.

“It hasn’t been on my mind for a while, but it was murder the last two nights (of the week),” Kerr said. “Overall, everything seems like it’s going well. . . .

“In the last few weeks, every time I turned around it, was going right for me. It will come of these days, I guess.”

Kerr trains only five horses and works primarily as a driver for other trainers. He is fourth in the drivers’ standings with 12 victories, thanks to the start he got when the meeting began in late January. Two weeks ago, someone mentioned that he was approaching 4,500, and once again he hadn’t been keeping track.

“Someone mentioned it to me, and it was the first time I was aware of it,” he said. “(Last time), I didn’t know what was going on until they came over and gave me a plaque and a presentation.”

Kerr has been one of the top drivers in California since arriving from Ontario a year ago. Last year, his first full season in California, he won 109 races, good for fifth place in the state’s year-end standings. Along the way, he drove Positive Spirit to several victories, including a track record of 1:51 4/5 at Sacramento last May.

Kerr grew up in Ontario and got involved in harness racing when his late father, Palmer, bought a yearling when Kerr was 11. By the time he was 16, he had earned a license to drive.

“I was hooked right off the bat,” he said. “When she made it to the races, we got going. I only drove his horses, even when I was green.”

He worked with his father at the smaller Ontario track for five years, then started his own training operation at 21. The operation grew to 35 horses in the 1970s when his brother Randy--now an accomplished driver on the Windsor-Hazel Park circuit--was assisting him. His father stayed active in the sport until his death in 1980.

Kerr traveled extensively in Ontario through the 1980s, racing afternoon and night and often driving 100 miles each way from his London, Ontario, farm. Three years ago, he sold the farm and moved his family to Cambridge, Ontario, which was much closer to the racetracks.

“I spent a lot of years racing seven days a week, sometimes twice a day,” he said. “It was a lot of driving, and it was hectic back then.”

Successful, too. From 1979 to 1989, he was always among the top 25 winning drivers, including a sixth-place finish in 1987, when he won 382 races. In late 1991, Kerr traveled to California to learn more about a year-round circuit that didn’t include frostbite.

“I’d talked to (driver-trainer) Greg Wright and he was like a kid in a candy store when he talked about California,” Kerr said. “So my wife and I flew out one week (in late November of 1991). I was 65% sure we’d wind up here, and when I left I was 95% sure.”

He figures to reach 4,500 in the next few nights. Kerr has only three drives tonight, but seven on Thursday.

“When I think back when I was going for 3,000, I was winning four a night, three times a week,” he said. “I just hope to get it over with and get on.”

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The California Harness Racing Assn., which is leasing Los Alamitos for the current harness meeting, plans to approach the California Horse Racing Board in a few weeks to propose the simulcasting of six races nightly from the Meadowlands in New Jersey before the live program.

The program would begin after the thoroughbred races at Santa Anita conclude and would run until 7:30, 15 minutes before the first live race. Fred Kuebler, the general manager of the CHRA, said the simulcasting program is still a few weeks away, but would probably include six races and wouldn’t be requested until the local horse population strengthens.

There has been a lack of ready horses in the first month of the meeting. Most of the harness horses had little chance to train in January because of the torrential rains at Del Mar, the main training site.

To card enough races, the track has taken two simulcast races from Chicago-area tracks for most of the meeting. Those would be discontinued when the Meadowlands experiment began.

“Now would be the best time for the experiment,” Kuebler said. “It wouldn’t interfere with any other breeds and it would benefit the horsemen, the track and the state.”

Kuebler said an average handle of $150,000 on the Meadowlands simulcasts would add $10,000 to the horsemen’s purse account and give the CHRA $12,000 and the state $4,500. He hopes CHRB approval can be granted in time to begin the experiment by the first of March.

Los Alamitos Notes

Nicol Trembly won his 1,800th race on Saturday night when he guided Game Advance in the sixth. . . . Owner Henry O’Shea and trainer Rudy Sialana swept the invitationals on Friday and Saturday, winning the filly race with Kurahaupo Pride and the colts-geldings division with Vance Win, who was timed in 1:56, the fastest mile of the meeting. . . . There is a carry-over of more than $8,000 for Wednesday’s Pick Six.

Driver Gene Vallandingham broke a 42-race losing streak Friday night when he guided You Own A Bank to victory in the first leg of the California Sires Stakes for pacing fillies. It was Vallandingham’s first victory of the meeting. . . . In the first legs of other Sires Stakes for 3-year-olds, Beast With Noname won the pacing colts and geldings division, and Cal-Aurium won the trotting colts-geldings division by 12 lengths. Eggwhite won the first leg of the series for trotting fillies. The second legs are set for Thursday and Friday nights, the $15,000 finals next week.