Jones Is Primed for Win

About 30 years ago, Aaron Jones began his rocky adventures in horse racing at Portland Meadows in Oregon.

“I had grown up on a farm, and was used to riding horses, so I thought I’d buy a few,” Jones said. “I figured it would take my mind off my business.”

The horses cost Jones about $20,000.

“They were four bums,” he said.

“Then one day, my trainer disappeared, and he took my [track] bank account with him. But I still had the four bums.”

So, Jones learned early on that nobody beats the races every day.

Now, at 77, he’s back for more, with trumpets. He has a trainer not known for absconding with the funds and a horse that might take him to his first Kentucky Derby. If Prime Timber runs well today in the $750,000 Santa Anita Derby, Jones and Bob Baffert will have one of the best seats in the house at Churchill Downs on May 1.

That Portland Meadows bilking sent Jones to the thoroughbred libraries, and he has been studying the game ever since. Years ago, he read someplace that 82% of the 2-year-olds don’t even make it to the races as 3-year-olds. Until he hired Baffert, Jones had encouraged his trainers to go slow with his horses.

The Santa Anita Derby will be Prime Timber’s sixth race overall but his third in five weeks. Desert Hero, undefeated in two starts and today’s morning-line favorite, beat Prime Timber by a neck going a mile two races back, but Prime Timber returned on March 13 to throttle the field at 1 1/16 miles. Third on the morning line at 7-2, Prime Timber could still go off the favorite.

“This is the toughest group of 3-year-olds that I’ve seen in the last few years,” said Baffert, who has won the last two Kentucky Derbies and two of the last three Santa Anita Derbies. “There’s a lot of parity around the country. It’s like the Final Four now. You do well in these races and you know you have a shot.”

After Baffert’s work with Kentucky Derby winners Silver Charm and Real Quiet, many potential new owners followed the yellow-brick road to barn 1-B at Santa Anita. Sometimes the chemistry wasn’t right and deals weren’t struck.

“You can usually tell right away from talking with a guy,” said Baffert, whose partnership with Jones began before they even met. They bought their first horse, for $1.5 million, at a 1997 auction at Keeneland, where Baffert did the bidding while Jones and his wife, Marie, monitored the action by telephone from their home in Eugene, Ore.

That purchase was Forestry--can you tell that Jones is in the lumber business?--who has been brought along slowly. He was a May foal, and didn’t run his first race until Jan. 2. In his fourth start, last Sunday, Forestry won a sprint stake, but he’s not considered a prospect for the Kentucky Derby.

“I still think he could turn out to be a better horse, but we’ll see,” Jones said. “Baffert says that the lower-priced horses usually turn out to be the best. If that’s so, that would make Prime Timber the one.”

Prime Timber wasn’t bargain basement; he cost $375,000 at a 2-year-old sale, when his name was Winewomenandsong, which the Joneses quickly changed. Prime Timber is a more proper moniker for a man who runs the Seneca Sawmill Co., which produces more than a million feet of lumber a day.

Jones isn’t flinching at the narrow spacing between Prime Timber’s recent races.

“One of the things I like about Baffert is that he can train 2-year-olds without breaking them down,” he said. “He has a lot of young horses, and he has the fewest I’ve ever seen go wrong. To me, it’s phenomenal.”

Jones’ long racing history can be divided into two parts, the beginning, which brought two champions and a number of other very good horses, and the recent period, which began after Jones had left racing in the late 1980s.

He won the Kentucky Oaks, Churchill Downs’ Derby eve race for 3-year-old fillies, with Tiffany Lass in 1986, four years after having won the male handicap title with Lemhi Gold, who lost a three-way horse-of-the-year vote with Conquistador Cielo and Landaluce. The tiebreaker rule had to be invoked before Conquistador Cielo was declared the champion.

At Tiffany Lass’ Oaks, however, Jones had to be carried into the winners’ circle because of a malignant tumor in his right leg.

It was diagnosed as incurable, but after surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, Jones figures he has won the battle.

“Doctors tell me that I’m the only guy who’s ever beat this particular cancer,” Jones said.

He got out of racing not because of the cancer, he says, but because the government made the tax breaks less attractive. Not only that, it looked as though the whole game was heading south. How far south? Jones had three dispersal sales, selling about 150 horses. They were appraised at $62 million and sold for about $18 million.

One story with a happier ending started the day Jones bought a mare from his trainer, Charlie Whittingham.

Upset because one of his clients, George Steinbrenner, was tardy paying his bills, Whittingham threatened to sell Steinbrenner’s mare to catch up.

“Do you want her?” Whittingham asked Jones.

“How much do you want?” Jones asked.

“$150,000,” Whittingham said.

The next morning, Jones walked into Whittingham’s barn office and said, “The most I can scape up is $135,000.”

“OK,” Whittingham said. “She’s yours.”

Telling the story, Aaron Jones, the man who since has bought a horse for $1.5 million, smiled at the thought of saving $15,000. He smiled even more when he said that the horse’s name was Belle Marie. Jones bred Vaguely Noble to Belle Marie and the result was Lemhi Gold.

Horse Racing Notes

Excellent Meeting, ridden by Kent Desormeaux, was a 2 1/2-length winner over The Happy Hopper in the $250,000 Fantasy Stakes at Oaklawn Park on Friday. Paying $2.60, Excellent Meeting ran 1 1/16 miles in 1:42 3/5, winning her fourth in a row. She hasn’t lost since running second to stablemate Silverbulletday in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies. . . . Silverbulletday will be ridden by Jerry Bailey for the first time in today’s $500,000 Ashland at Keeneland. . . . At Keeneland on Friday, Lil’s Lad, the favorite for last year’s Kentucky Derby before he was injured while running second in the Blue Grass, made his debut as a 4-year-old and won by 6 1/2 lengths. . . . At Oaklawn today, Precocity, trained by Bob Baffert before John Franks bought him for $200,000, will try to win the Oaklawn Handicap for the second consecutive year. Franks and his trainer, Bobby Barnett, will run a three-horse entry in the $750,000 race, with Excellent Luck and Littlebitlively joining Precocity. Behrens, winner of the Gulfstream Park Handicap, probably will be favored.

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Santa Anita Derby

* When: Today.

* Where: Santa Anita Park.

* Post: 2:30 p.m.

* TV: Channel 11.

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Santa Anita Derby

THE FACTS

* Post: 2:30 p.m. today, Channel 11.

* Where: Santa Anita Park.

* Purse: $750,000.

* Race distance: 1 1/8 miles.

THE LINEUP

Today’s lineup in post position order (jockeys in parentheses) with odds:

1. HONEST LADY (Kent Desormeaux): 4-1

Owner: Juddmonte Farms. Trainer: Bobby Frankel

2. PRIME TIMBER (David Flores): 7-2

Owner: Aaron and Marie Jones. Trainer: Bob Baffert

3. DESERT HERO (Corey Nakatani): 5-2

Owner: The Thoroughbred Corp. Trainer: Richard Mandella

4. CAPSIZED GOLD (Alex Solis): 8-1

Owner: Spur Stable, Quartucci, Stonerside Stable. Trainer: Lisa Lewis

5. WALK THAT WALK (Chris Antley): 30-1

Owner: Manzani, Sarno and Stathos. Trainer: Michael Whittingham

6. HIGH WIRE ACT (Chris McCarron): 8-1

Owner: 505 Farms. Trainer: John Shirreffs

7. GENERAL CHALLENGE (Gary Stevens): 3-1

Owner: Golden Eagle Farm. Trainer: Bob Baffert

8. CHARISMATIC (Laffit Pincay): 15-1

Owner: Bob and Beverly Lewis. Trainer: D. Wayne Lukas