LOS ALAMITOS : Trainer Gets 36-Horse Infusion

For most of 1992, Jesse Maldonado trained only two quarter horses--Mega Dash and Reeds Signature.

Reeds Signature won two stakes races last summer and Mega Dash won two major stakes and was voted national 2-year-old gelding champion.

This year, Reeds Signature has been sent to the breeding shed, but Mega Dash will be back and is pointing to the Los Alamitos Derby in early July. He will not be a lonely horse around the barn.

Maldonado has joined with prominent owner Jens List Jr. and will train 40 horses when the Los Alamitos quarter horse season begins Friday night. Of those, 36 are List’s. Paul Reed owns Mega Dash.

“I’ve been here over 20 years and I used to have a big a stable, but I never had access to better-bred horses,” Maldonado said. “(List and I) have been talking about it since last year. It was something we didn’t just jump into.”

List operates one of the nation’s largest quarter horse operations. Aside from his racing stable, he also owns the Double Bar S Ranch in Nuevo, where he stands several stallions. Last year, he won the Governor’s Cup Futurity with First Hi Hope, a gelding who will be back this year.

Most of Maldonado’s stable will be 2- and 3-year-olds pointing for futurities and derbies, and they will have plenty of opportunities.

The meeting runs through Dec. 12, and along the way virtually every quarter horse with national championship aspirations will step onto Los Alamitos’ track. Last year, eight of the 10 horses who won year-end championships raced at either Los Alamitos or Hollywood Park. The others ran exclusively at Ruidoso Downs in New Mexico. A similar situation exists in the Arabian racing community, which has grown stronger in Southern California in the past few years.

Major races among the 54 quarter horse stakes include the Los Alamitos Derby on July 2, Vessels Maturity on July 3, Dash For Cash Futurity on July 30, Governor’s Cup Futurity on Sept. 4, Los Alamitos Championship on Sept. 18, Ed Burke Memorial Futurity on Oct. 9, Marathon Handicap on Nov. 27, Golden State Derby on Dec. 10 and the Golden State Futurity on Dec. 12.

Two of the biggest nights will be the Nov. 13 running of the Quarter Horse Breeders Classics, the quarter horse version of the Breeders’ Cup; and the Champion of Champions on Dec. 11, which has determined 14 of the last 21 quarter horse champions.

Refrigerator, who won last year’s Champion of Champions and was voted world champion, is expected to defend his title. The 5-year-old gelding will spend the summer at Ruidoso Downs before arriving in California in September. He will have a new jockey this year because Kip Didericksen, his regular rider over the last three years, has retired.

Also missing is jockey Jerry Yoakum, who won the riding title last winter, but was handed a one-year suspension in February after an electrical device was found in his locker in the jockey’s room.

Blane Schvaneveldt, quarter horse racing’s leading trainer, will again have a deep stable. Schvaneveldt has 245 stakes victories at Los Alamitos.

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Saturday night marked the conclusion of the first harness meeting at Los Alamitos managed by the California Harness Racing Assn. The CHRA took over California harness racing last January, two months after Lloyd Arnold announced he would no longer conduct meetings.

Led by Paul Reddam of Newport Beach and Perry De Luna of Culver City, the CHRA also will operate the Sacramento meeting this summer, as well as a winter meeting at Los Alamitos, beginning in December.

The CHRA meeting averaged 4,345 fans who wagered $842,511. The handle figures was much higher than last fall’s average of $584,853, which included direct competition with Hollywood Park quarter horses. It was lower than last spring’s $933,320, which had no competition.