Dashing Folly Has Look of a Champion

Four fillies have won the Champion of Champions at Los Alamitos, but none of them has had all-female connections like Dashing Folly, who will be a heavy favorite when the Orange County track runs the $300,000 quarter horse race Sunday night.

Pay close attention, because it gets confusing.

Dashing Folly, who has led every step of the way in winning all nine of her races this year, was picked out at a yearling auction by Carol McArthur.

Carol McArthur’s sister-in-law is Donna McArthur, who trains Dashing Folly.

And Dashing Folly is ridden by Tami Purcell, a 36-year-old former computer programmer who quit a good job, passing up a promotion, to ride horses in her native Texas 15 years ago. Purcell won her 1,500th race earlier this year and has won more races than any female quarter horse jockey. She could become the first woman to ride a winner of the Champion of Champions, which was first run in 1972.

The only male interloper in the Dashing Folly scenario is Oscar McArthur, the Houston developer who is Carol McArthur’s husband. Donna Arthur is married to James McArthur, Oscar’s older brother and himself a distinguished trainer.

Dashing Folly’s stable name, Jaramar Limited, comes from the name of Oscar McArthur’s real estate company. The Jaramar name stems from the names of Oscar and Carol McArthur’s children--Jarrett, Amy and Marissa. After Carol McArthur decided that she liked the looks of Dashing Folly, Jaramar paid $30,000 for Dashing Folly at a yearling auction.

So much for the introductions. A spotlight, please, for Dashing Folly, who won the Los Alamitos Derby on Nov. 15 to qualify for the Champion of Champions.

At 440 yards, Sunday’s race is 40 yards farther than the Derby, and longer than Dashing Folly has ever run, but she’s shown no sign of stopping in any of her races this year. She’s usually clinched the win well before the finish line nears.

“She wants to please,” Purcell said. “She wants to run. She gets out of the gate so well because she’s just a very agile filly.”

Purcell has ridden Dashing Folly in all 12 of her races. They didn’t win at all when Dashing Folly was a 2-year-old. In July and August of 1995, the filly ran fourth in three consecutive races at Ruidoso Downs in Ruidoso, N.M., stumbling out of the gate in defeat No. 3.

“She was overanxious then,” Donna McArthur said. “She was fidgety and nervous. She lacked patience.”

Schooling, schooling and schooling made Dashing Folly such an impeccable gate horse. She hasn’t been beaten since Aug. 18, 1995, and she’s one win away from being voted world champion, which is quarter horse racing’s label for horse of the year.

To win, Dashing Folly will have to beat Winalota Cash, last year’s world champion. They will start next to one another, Dashing Folly having drawn No. 3 and Winalota Cash breaking from the No. 4 post.

“I don’t think the post makes any difference,” Donna McArthur said. “My filly’s blessed with a lot of talent and she knows what she’s going to do. I think she deserves the world championship, even if she somehow gets beat. I don’t think there’s a horse in the race that’s done what she’s done this year.”

Dashing Folly is the Cigar of quarter horse racing. A win Sunday would leave her at 10-0, the same record that Cigar had in wrapping up the thoroughbred horse-of-the-year title in 1995.

Dashing Folly has scored her last seven victories at Los Alamitos.

“It’s been an advantage not having to ship her from track to track,” McArthur said. “We’ve also had good weather all year. The cool night racing has been good for her. It’s not the kind of weather she would have had if she had been running in New Mexico, Texas or Oklahoma.”

There are other challengers besides Winalota Cash, many of them females: Blushing By is a mare who won the Los Alamitos Championship; Ah Sigh, another filly, was second in the Los Alamitos Championship, and Kool Kue Baby, also a distaffer, won the American Quarter Horse Assn. Challenge Championship.

Others running are BCR My Main Man, Roll Into Mischief, My Debut, IB Quick and Auditions Legacy. My Debut is trained by Blane Schvaneveldt, who has won a record nine Champion of Champions, including the last four.

Donna McArthur’s husband, James, trained Easy Date, the filly who was voted world champion after winning the 1975 Champion of Champions.

This historical tie-in is important to Donna McArthur.

“It’d be nice to look back some day and see where you’ve won the same big race that your husband did,” she said.

Horse Racing Notes

Howard Keck, who was 83 when he died a week ago, was the only man who won the country’s two biggest races--the Kentucky Derby and the Indianapolis 500. Keck bred Ferdinand, and racing in the name of his wife, Libby, the colt won the 1986 Derby for trainer Charlie Whittingham and jockey Bill Shoemaker. Bill Vukovich drove Keck cars that won at Indy in 1953 and ’54.

Mike Manning has resigned as vice president at Santa Anita. . . . Dramatic Gold, 122 pounds, and Gentlemen, 121, are the high weights in a six-horse field for Sunday’s $100,000 Native Diver Handicap at Hollywood Park. . . . Wally Dollase, who’s running Alyrob in the Native Diver, was upstaged Wednesday when his son, Craig, saddled the winners of three consecutive races.