County Fair Meet to Begin : Horse racing: Thoroughbreds, quarter horses and Appaloosas will run for the next 19 days at Pomona.

The Los Angeles County Fair racing meet, that marathon combination of thoroughbred, quarter horse and Appaloosa races, opens for the 55th time today at Fairplex Park in Pomona, with 19 days of action running through Oct. 4.

Filling the annual break between the closing of Del Mar and the opening of the Oak Tree season at Santa Anita, Fairplex doesn’t attract many of the top horses and leading jockeys, but it does draw the bettors. Last year, the fair’s daily handle was $3.4 million, which ranked seventh nationally, behind such major tracks as Del Mar, Santa Anita, Hollywood Park and Saratoga.

Post time daily is 1 p.m., and today there are 13 races, the last nine for thoroughbreds. There are three stakes on the card--the Foothill and the Bustles and Bows, both $50,000 races for thoroughbreds, and the $10,000 Express Stakes for quarter horses.

Purse money at the five-furlong track will total $4.1 million, $1.1 million of it for the 21 stakes for thoroughbreds. The richest race will be the $150,000 Pomona Invitational Handicap on Oct. 3.

David Flores, who has either won or tied for the fair riding title the last four years, has mounts for all nine thoroughbred races today. He will ride Boss Soss in the Foothill and Falmora in the Bustles and Bows. Flores set a Pomona record when he won 48 races in 1991.