Allred’s Embarrassing Streak Finally Comes to an End

The extended drought for track owner Edward Allred is over.

Despite a stable of more than 400 quarter horses, Allred and trainer Bruce Hawkinson visited the winner’s circle in a stakes race for the first time in the meeting last Friday when the most unlikely of candidates, Rapid Champ, won the $20,000 Pat Hyland Handicap.

It was a victory long in coming for the man they call “Doc,” who has spent more than $12 million on improvements at the race course but has watched his horses come up empty in 10 previous stakes events.

“It’s been an awfully long dry spell for us, but we will overcome it,” Hawkinson said.

He admits he took a lot of ribbing around the barns as the season wore on without a big winner. Allred’s horses have turned in many top times, only to fail each time when the finals came around. Among those have been highly touted 2-year-old Secret Seraph and top-derby qualifiers Free Thinker, Keeps and First And Proud.

Secret Seraph was the most stunning disappointment. She posted the best time in qualifying for the Kindergarten Futurity, but flipped over on her back at the starting gate as the race began. She also showed poorly in her next outing, the Governor’s Cup Futurity. Hawkinson since has put her on an extended break.

“We have to try and pace ourselves for the [$250,000-added Los Alamitos] Million,” he said. “I’m sure everyone else is doing that, too.”

Trials for the Million are Dec. 6.

Hawkinson, a 30-year veteran, said he was beginning to feel a bit snake-bitten as he prepared Rapid Champ for the Hyland Handicap.

“Honest to God, our colts ran as hard as they can run,” he said. “I don’t care how good they are, you’re lucky just to get them into the finals of these races, let alone win them.”

Rapid Champ, a 6-year-old gelding and notorious slow starter, came out of the gate rather well and covered the 870-yard race for older horses in 45.16 seconds, beating some of the track’s more well known long-distance horses, including Brotherly and Speedy Lunch. The victory by a head over 11-1 longshot Daggers And Darkness was the first for Rapid Champ in more than a year.

“He warmed up extremely well and he was feeling really good during the early part of the race,” jockey Gary Boag said. “When I asked him to run a little more, he grabbed a hold of the bit and he started motoring.”

That was good news for Allred, who left town after the race and was unavailable for comment. Allred was voted American Quarter Horse Assn. Champion Breeder in 1987, 1992-93 and 1995. He had 61 victories a year ago, the most by any horse owner in the nation.

But until last weekend, this meeting has been another story.

Hawkinson said Rapid Champ almost didn’t make it to the Hyland final because Allred had considered selling the horse. It was only after the veteran trainer pleaded with the owner that Rapid Champ got another chance at a stakes title.

“In all honesty, that horse, if you go back in its career, has never run a bad race,” Hawkinson said. “He’s just been unlucky not to win. He’s run several winning efforts and he just didn’t get there in the end. He always gives you a big effort. He’s always second or third coming out of the turn. That’s the way that sucker runs. He has no early speed at all.”

Hawkinson will try to qualify three horses Friday for the July 28 Ed Burke Memorial Futurity, a 350-yard race for 2-year-olds. They are Fourth And Two, Alamitos Score and Mac McKinnon.

Is another trip to the winner’s circle in the offing?

“I’m really high on Fourth And Two. I think it is going to be a very good 2-year-old,” Hawkinson said.

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Trainers continue to make big news at the track.

Blane Schvaneveldt, the leading quarter horse trainer in the nation with 271 stakes victories, also picked up a first last week. He finally won the $110,755 Golden State Derby when Templetonian posted a three-quarters of a length win over proven stakes winner Red Hot Rhythm.

Schvaneveldt, who has been the track’s leading trainer 35 times since 1973 when the meeting was split between winter and summer, has two horses, Miga Ja and Lil Bita Brunch, entered in Saturday’s $40,000 Spencer L. Childers California Breeders Championship. The race is for 3-year-olds and up.

Trainer Charles S. Treece leads the field with three entrees, Almars Secret, Artesias Merridoc and Comes A Storm. Meter Me Gone and Outlasting belong to Bob Gilbert, the only other trainer who has more than one horse in the field.

Danny Garrett, two-time defending Arabian horse trainer champion, needs two victories to become the first Arabian trainer to post 100 victories at Los Alamitos. He has nine victories this meet, which hasn’t been one of his best, he admits. He trails Billy M. Lewis by 13 victories in the Arabian trainer standings.

“I’ve always had good luck during the second half of the season and I feel I have a quality barn that can win many races here,” Garrett told a track spokesman.

Finally, trainer Jose Flores, 21, who sent shock waves through the track when he reinvigorated the tired IB Quick for a victory in the Vessels Maturity, said the horse will make its next start Aug. 16 against Champion of Champions winner My Debut in the $75,000 Go Man Go Handicap.

Los Alamitos Notes

Kindergarten Futurity winner Corona Cartel, trained by Jaime Gomez, failed to qualify for the finals of the Rainbow Futurity at Ruidoso (N.M.) Downs last week, but Reckless Roula, another horse based at Los Alamitos, posted the top qualifying time in the field. The race will be July 27. . . . Vandium Steel, which went off as a 91-1 longshot, finished third in the $25,000 six-furlong Firecracker Futurity for colts and geldings July 5. The colt, Vanilla Skaikh, won its second outing in as many starts by three lengths over FS Fire Star in the 12-horse field. . . . Seyvilla Wikeyna established herself as the solid front-runner for the Daughters of the Desert Futurity, when she captured the $21,000 six-furlong California Firecracker for 3-year-old fillies July 5 by 15 lengths. It was the first victory for Florida-based owner Anne Seymour and the second in as many starts for the filly. The Desert Futurity, to be run Oct. 26, boasts the richest purse of any Arabian race in the world. . . . The 3-year-old filly Dashing Folly, with Tami Purcell aboard, won her fifth consecutive start in the $15,000 400-yard Independence Day Handicap July 6, making her the favorite for the Nov. 15 Grade I Los Alamitos Derby. . . . Sam Taire changed strategy with Richard Pfau in the saddle and went out fast to win the $10,800 1 1/8-mile Charles O. Pollard Handicap July 6.