LOS ALAMITOS : Trainer Honors the Family Name With His Quarter Horse Success

Paul Jones, the leading quarter horse trainer at Los Alamitos, has few moments to spare.

He saddles an average of three horses a night, which keeps him busy until midnight. The next morning, it’s back to work early. Even some afternoons are booked when his thoroughbred trainees run at Hollywood Park.

But last week, when a 104-degree fever forced a reluctant Jones to stay home, there was no question who would take over his thriving operation.

Jones’ father, Paul Sr., stepped in gladly. Merely returning the favor, really.

The senior Jones had been training for 15 years when a heart problem slowed him. Walking from the racetrack back to his barn one morning in 1988, he had to stop three times to catch his breath. He went to the hospital that day and stayed for six. Doctors concluded he had not suffered a heart attack, but would need open-heart surgery to open several blocked arteries.

Paul Jr., the assistant trainer at the time, took over the 20-horse barn while his father recovered. And now, six years later, Jones Jr. has recorded victory No. 147. His father retired in 1988 with 106.

“He was doing so well, I thought I’d better stay out of the way,” the elder Jones said.

The younger Jones also refers to the transition and his choice of career as almost haphazard.

“I was always the type that didn’t know what I was going to do and I just ended up training,” he said. “And it turns out it’s something I really like.”

Paul Sr. had horses while growing up in Torrance, but he also had hot rods and a brother who was five years older. After playing around with the cars and racing locally on weekends, his brother, Parnelli, moved onto the national stage, racing all over the country and winning the Indianapolis 500 in 1963.

Paul Jones Sr. also found success behind the wheel, although he never was as famous as his brother.

Twice, injuries forced Paul Jones Sr. to take six months off from driving race cars. He points to his large hands and still-muscular forearms as he begins the list of broken bones: two in his left hand, one in the right, his forearms, both collar bones and several ribs.

When he quit driving race cars after 20 years, Paul Sr. bought a horse.

“I had a friend who was doing match races, so I bought a horse at Pomona. It couldn’t outrun me on the ground,’ he said.

But he kept trying. The next horse had problems but with care, Jones eventually raced it at Los Alamitos but lost it on a claim.

The track’s racing secretary gave him only one stall to start, but Jones stuck with the game and mastered the art of claiming. He still is proud to say he won with every horse he claimed. And when he retired, he had a public stable of 20 horses.

“At one time, Little Paul wanted to go into car racing,” the senior Jones said of his 28-year-old son. “I think his first words were vroom vroom . But . . . he followed me into horses.

“I’m glad Paul chose the horses over the cars. I’ve seen too many (drivers) get themselves killed.”

Paul Jones Sr. can’t leave racing completely, though, not even in retirement.

His primary racing interest is now in homing pigeons. In the same proud voice that he tells about his driving and conditioning feats, he tells about a 500-mile pigeon race that only four birds finished in one day. Two of them were his.

“Racing’s in my blood, I guess,” he said.

Jones’ brother, Parnelli, is retired from driving, too--although he did drive the pace car last May at Indy--but his sons keep the name involved in racing.

And Paul Jr. keeps the name alive in horse racing. When he started training on his own, the owners his father had trained for left. So Paul Jr. built a five-horse family-owned stable into one of the largest and most successful public stables. Chances are, there will be a Paul Jones in quarter horse racing for some time.

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Two former claimers are likely to be among the top picks in Friday’s $20,000 Table Tennis Handicap, an 870-yard race for older horses. And if their trainer has his wish, they will run 1-2 again.

Shopping the $2,500 claiming races for his clients, Charles Treece found Mr. Diddy Wa Diddy for owner Gladys DeWolf, and Streakin Dunes for Beatrice and Fred Waterworth.

Mr. Diddy Wa Diddy developed first, winning allowance races and then taking on stakes challenges. With $115,555 in lifetime earnings, the 6-year-old bay gelding won three stakes in the last year.

Streakin Dunes came along more slowly. Strictly a claimer until his most recent race, Streakin Dunes earned $35,460 in 40 tries. But in his last race, he won the Grade III Endurance Handicap, beating out Trucklin Six by a nose and Mr. Diddy Wa Diddy by a neck.

“It surprised the hell out of me that time, but he’s that good,” Treece said of Streakin Dunes. “We’re ready.”

Another recent graduate of the claiming ranks, Woodchuck Brown, lost a $12,500 claiming race by 13 1/2 lengths, then finished 11 1/4 lengths behind against $8,000 horses before finally winning for $5,000. Trainer Dwayne Wells entered him in the All-Star Jockey Challenge, then watched as the horse beat stakes competition by a neck under Kent Desormeaux.

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Four Forty Blast, last year’s champion 3-year-old gelding, will make his first start of the year in the $20,000 Chicado V Handicap on Saturday.

The First Down Dash gelding, who runs for his breeders, Dutch Masters III, ran a temperature at the beginning of the meeting, lost three weeks of training and hasn’t raced since the Champion Classic last Nov. 13. His sixth-place finish in that race was a disappointing end to a year in which he raced 11 times and won eight, earning $205,528.

Now in Jaime Gomez’s barn, Four Forty Blast has earned $319,894.

Probable competitors in the Chicado field include Beinbetter and Childish, from Paul Jones’ barn; the Blane Schvaneveldt-trained trio of Abadasher, Hopkins and Make Mine Bud, and Connie Hall’s Avison.