FAIRPLEX : A Second Upset for Fenstermaker and Hooper Stable

At the end of this year’s Santa Anita season, trainer Ross Fenstermaker had run out of horses and run out of hope.

“I was all set to pack up and head for Oklahoma, where my family was,” Fenstermaker said. “Stay in racing? I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

But before Fenstermaker could get out of California, Fred Hooper, the man he had trained for most of his life, sent him a fresh supply of horses from Florida.

Fenstermaker, 54, first joined Hooper when he was a teen-ager and has been responsible for some of Hooper’s biggest stakes victories--including Precisionist’s victory in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Aqueduct in 1985. Precisionist won that race after a layoff of more than four months and hadn’t sprinted in almost two years.

Hooper fired Fenstermaker about three years ago, in a dispute over how much the trainer thought he should be paid. But now they are together again, and on Saturday at Fairplex Park, Fenstermaker scored his second upset of the week for the Hooper stable.

On Tuesday, Fenstermaker saddled Tri To Watch ($103) for a victory in the Governor’s Cup Handicap. Then on Saturday, Fenstermaker and jockey Victor Navarro clicked again as I Like To Win, a half-brother to Tri To Watch, won the $100,000 Pomona Derby and paid $51.

Both of Fenstermaker’s stakes winners are Hooper-bred sons out of the dam I Like To Watch. Tri To Watch is a son of Tri Jet, and I Like To Win was sired by Copelan.

Fenstermaker said that Hooper, who will turn 97 on Wednesday, is with his family in Alabama getting ready to celebrate his birthday. Hooper won the 1945 Kentucky Derby with Hoop Jr., the first horse he ever owned. He had bought him as a yearling for $10,000 and named him after his son.

I Like To Win, who ran 1 1/8 miles in 1:50 4/5, finished a length ahead of Boyo, who had won the Derby Trial a week ago as I Like To Win finished third, beaten by 5 1/2 lengths.

“That race didn’t take much out of my horse,” Fenstermaker said Saturday. “My only question was whether he was good enough to win this race. Victor knows this horse better than anybody, because he’s always around him in the mornings.”

I Like To Win was winless in 12 starts before Saturday. Saturday’s purse of $55,000 almost matched what he had earned in all 20 of his other starts.

Boyo led until the final sixteenth of a mile, with Navarro sitting in third place most of the way, not far behind.

“We were moving well by the quarter pole and just waiting on the other horses,” Navarro said.

Boyo, the 5-2 favorite, finished four lengths in front of Devil Diamond, who beat Imperial Ridge by a neck for third place.

Horse Racing Notes

In another race on Fairplex’s betting program, Slew Of Damascus won the $200,000 Bay Meadows Handicap. Fast Cure was second and Lissitki third. Slew Of Damascus, who paid $7 at Fairplex, had had two unsuccessful starts since winning the Wickerr Handicap at Del Mar. . . . Reign Of Terror, winning his fourth in a row, was a half-length winner in Saturday’s Pomona Quarter Horse Championship. . . . Memo is the 9-5 favorite today in the Pomona Invitational Handicap. . . . Saturday’s handle of $6.1 million broke the Fairplex record of $4.9 million, set earlier this season. Of the total, $1.9 million was bet on-track. . . . The 19-day season ends Monday.