LOS ALAMITOS : AQHA Challenge Could Determine Top Aged Mare

Tonight is AQHA Challenge Championship night at Los Alamitos, with horses from across the country competing for more than $350,000 in purse money. Ten of the 12 races are stakes, including the $100,000 AQHA Challenge Championship.

The Grade I AQHA Challenge Championship figures to be one of the pivotal races in determining the year’s champion aged mare. Expected starters in the race are championship contenders Sound Dash, Junos Request and Down With Debt.

Sound Dash and Junos Request have raced each other often in the Midwest, with both mares dominating. Their main rival may prove to be morning-line favorite Down With Debt, undefeated at Los Alamitos this year. The Challenge Championship will be the first race in which all three mares are running this season.

Nine other stakes will feature such horses as three-time distance champion Griswold, Los Alamitos Championship winner Brotherly, Vessels Maturity winner Avison, Southern California Derby winner Artesias Special Gal and the top 870-yard runner, Mr Diddy Wa Diddy.

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Two of the best female racehorses at Los Alamitos can be found in the barn of one man, trainer Charlie Bloomquist. Bloomquist conditions not only Down With Debt but also has the tough freshman filly Ah Sigh, whose most recent accomplishment was a stunning victory in last Friday’s $185,000 Ed Burke Memorial Futurity.

Ah Sigh, owned by Frank Nakamura, has been drawing attention since her debut April 23, when she broke her maiden by three-quarters of a length. When she easily won a trial for the Grade II Miss Kindergarten Futurity, then returned to post an effortless victory in the June 25 final, the verdict was in--Ah Sigh was one tough filly.

It was no surprise, then, that Ah Sigh was favored in the final of the Governor’s Cup Futurity. The surprise was that she finished third, suffering her first defeat. The reason soon came clear to Bloomquist. Ah Sigh had been sick.

“She had a little temperature and wasn’t feeling good,” Bloomquist said. “We thought it was better to give her a little time off.”

After a two-month rest, Ah Sigh reappeared Oct. 21 in the trials for the Grade I Ed Burke and won the first trial by 1 3/4 lengths in 17.57 seconds, the fastest time of the meeting for a 2-year-old filly. Then last Friday, the speedy filly won the Ed Burke Memorial Futurity by three lengths in 17.63 seconds.

”. . . I don’t believe I’ve ever had a 2-year-old that had everything together and was as big and as strong and as willing as Ah Sigh,” Bloomquist said. “(When she races), she acts like a 4-year-old. Around the barn, she doesn’t act like a 2-year-old, she acts like an old horse.”

Bloomquist, with no horses entered on last Sunday’s card, celebrated Ah Sigh’s victory and his daughter’s first birthday at Disneyland, and he may be celebrating again tonight if Down With Debt continues her winning campaign in the AQHA Challenge Championship.

Down With Debt is trying for her first year-end award after losing the champion 3-year-old filly title last year to multiple stakes winner Royal Down Dash, who is also a probable starter in the AQHA Challenge Championship.

“If everybody gets a fair chance and you get outrun, then you get outrun,” said Bloomquist. “I feel they have to outrun (Down With Debt) right now. Until somebody beats (her), I think she’s the best.”

Los Alamitos Notes

Kits Merrilimits finished third in the fifth race on Oct. 1, but was disqualified last Friday because of a positive drug test. Trainer Bonifacio Rayas and owner Edgar Maldonado were suspended for 30 days each because of the positive test and each was fined $1,000. . . . Jockey G.R. Carter won five races--four in succession--last Saturday night. . . . Time For Royal Cash’s victory in the $131,600 Golden State Derby last Saturday made him the first horse since Tolltac in 1983 and ’84 to win both the Golden State Futurity and Derby.