LOS ALAMITOS : From Riding to Training, Treece Finds Winning Niche

It’s a long, hard journey, going from riding match races in Victorville to training champion quarter horses at Los Alamitos. Just ask trainer Charles Treece. He has made it.

Treece, who began in racing as a jockey in 1972, won the $100,000 Los Alamitos Championship last Friday night with one of his trainees, Brotherly.

Owned by the partnership of Shari Barham, Mark Shannon and Shirley Loeb, Brotherly convincingly beat a strong field that included defending world champion Refrigerator, champion aged mare Sound Dash and Vessels Maturity dead-heat winner Avison.

Brotherly raced 440 yards in 21.57 seconds, earning $55,000 of the total purse for his 12th victory in 28 starts. He also earned a berth in the prestigious Champion of Champions, to be run Dec. 17 at Los Alamitos.

For Treece, it was the third Grade I victory of the season, and his second in the last two weeks.

Treece won his first Grade I event last year, with Mr Diddy Wa Diddy in the 870-yard Marathon Handicap. This year, Artesias Special Gal won the Southern California Derby for him before Brotherly won the Pomona Invitational Handicap on Oct. 1.

Treece, 36, started riding in match races when he was 14. He credits Los Alamitos trainer Kenneth Chapman with helping him acquire his first racehorse, a mare named Central Park.

“I learned how to ride races on her,” Treece said. “I learned how to break from the gates, and how to really ride races.”

When he turned 16, the legal age to be licensed as a jockey, Treece went to Los Alamitos.

“I started at the bottom, cleaning stalls, grooming and galloping for (Curt) Perner,” Treece recalled. “I did that for the entire meet.”

For the next three years, Treece rode at tracks in Arizona and California. By the time he was 19, however, he was getting too big to ride.

“When I was 18, I started to grow,” said the 5-foot-10 Treece.

The weight issue necessitated a change of careers and, like many jockeys before him, Treece turned to training.

“I answered the phone one morning after galloping horses, and a lady said, ‘You don’t know me, but I know you, and I want you to come work for us.’ And then she said, ‘By the way, how old are you?’ I said I was 19, and she said, ‘Well, you’re a little young, but we’ll give you a try anyway.’ ”

The woman was Loeb, one of Brotherly’s owners. Treece went to work for Loeb Ranch, sending horses to trainer John Cooper at the racetrack.

In 1981, Treece moved and started training for Scane Ranch, now Legacy Ranch.

“I worked for Loeb and Scane, and between Cooper and (Charlie) Bloomquist (who trained for Scane Ranch), they’re the ones I learned from,” Treece said.

He got his trainer’s license in 1983 and spent his first year working for Keith Asmussen in Laredo, Tex., then returned home to Southern California.

“People kept asking me why I didn’t go back to the track,” Treece said. “So I decided I was going to go to the track and train. I was going to give it a shot.

“I started with six horses altogether. They put me in the last barn, facing the kitchen.”

Even so, Treece finished as the fifth-leading trainer at Los Alamitos that year, and has been in the top five every year since.

Among the good horses Treece has trained are Movin Brown Jug and Baychaino, champion distance horses; Vandy’s Policy, who won more than $300,000; Artesias Special Gal, the top 3-year-old mare, and Mr Diddy Wa Diddy, one of the best 870-yard runners in the country.

And now, Brotherly can be added to that list.

“Your favorite horses aren’t always your fastest ones,” Treece said. “Some horses, you know, are cheaper horses, but they give you all they have. You can’t knock them for that.

“But Brotherly is one of my top choices. When you talk about outrunning Refrigerator and horses like that, you’re talking about the best.”

And his goals?

“My goal is just doing what I’m doing,” he said. “I’ve never had a job. This is what I like to do.”

Los Alamitos Notes

Six trials for the $200,000 Ed Burke Memorial Futurity for 2-year-olds lead tonight’s program. Highlighting the evening will be the return of filly Ah Sigh. Trained by Charlie Bloomquist, Ah Sigh has won four of five starts this year, among them the Miss Kindergarten Futurity. Other notable entrants are The Fling King, Kindergarten Futurity runner-up; Alibis Assets, PCQHRA Breeders Futurity runner-up, and BCR My Main Man, second-place finisher in the grade I Diamond Classic Futurity.

Refrigerator became quarter horse racing’s first $2-million money earner with his runner-up finish in the Los Alamitos Championship. The second-place check of $22,500 was enough to raise Refrigerator’s earnings to $2,006,867. . . . Magna Terra Smoky also set an earnings record last weekend. With his allowance victory, Magna Terra Smoky became the richest Arabian racehorse of all time, with $215,523 in earnings.

Down With Debt, a top contender for world champion honors, remained undefeated last Saturday night, winning the $27,000 AQHA California Challenge Championship and earning a berth in the AQHA Challenge Championship, to be run Nov. 11 at Los Alamitos.