Allred Is Still All Aglow Over Los Alamitos Racing

A little warning was offered. If you want to talk to Doc Allred, chairman and chief executive officer of the Los Alamitos race track, it is always best to sit down and chat before the races start.

Because otherwise, and this is no offense to any visitor, once the horses start to run Allred really can’t be distracted. It’s not that he isn’t interested, it’s just that he really, really loves these horse races.

The 50th season of quarterhorse racing started last weekend at Los Alamitos and Allred is excited.

Allred is 62 years old and his love for this cozy track off Katella Avenue started over 40 years ago when a friend brought him along for an afternoon of handicapping, gambling, hanging around on the backside. Allred was intrigued. He had read that some brothers named Allred were racing that day. These Allreds were no relation, but maybe it was an omen.

Allred, a law student at USC at the time, found that his first trip to Los Alamitos ignited a lifelong passion. “It was the cowboys,” Allred says. He is sitting at his table in the dining room of the Vessels Club, the elegant, wood-paneled area where race fans, handicappers, people just interested in a night out, can have an elegant dinner of ahi tuna or steak and artichokes, and watch the races too.

“It was guys who wore boots, got dusty, just loved the horses,” Allred says. “You know, cowboys.”

Allred eventually ended up in medical school at Loma Linda. Allred--whose given name is Edward but “Doc” is an honest nickname--used to play hooky in the afternoons, rushing over to Los Alamitos. He couldn’t help himself. “It was against the rules at the time for medical students to go to the track,” Allred says, “but I couldn’t stay away. I almost got tossed out of school many times, but I had some friends, I guess. I managed to graduate.”

Allred made his fortune by founding the Family Planning Assn. Medical Group. This group is the largest abortion provider in the state of California. Yes, Allred says, “I run abortion clinics. It’s my business and I don’t hide from it.”

His business has been profitable but never, in all his years of working as a doctor and starting his clinics, did Allred stay away from Los Alamitos. Partly it was for the betting action. “I loved that, of course,” Allred says. But he loved the track just as much for the lifestyle as for the betting.

Sitting in his suit and tie, his hair impeccably cut, Allred does not cut the figure of a cowboy. But he admires the men who train the quarterhorses, the men who never wear anything but jeans and boots, who find dust intoxicating, who find the more high-profile life of dealing in thoroughbred racing pretentious.

“It’s a lifestyle and there’s still a place for it,” Allred says. “I think there will always be a place for it.”

As he made money in medicine, Allred began spending it on horses. And the track. He began to purchase an interest in Los Alamitos and in 1996 Allred was able to buy out some others. Now he owns the track all by himself.

While the cowboy life hooked Allred on the sport, Allred is also a businessman. He did not buy the track to dabble.

The Vessels Club was a $5-million investment. “People need to be entertained in a certain style,” Allred says. “They expect it.” Allred has also been instrumental in the growth of the Los Alamitos Million, a December race for 2-year-olds.

The future of tracks such as Los Alamitos isn’t in the horses and horsemen Allred says. It is in simulcasting, the bringing of races from around the country to in-house televisions where local fans can come to the track, watch, bet, and maybe even stay for the night card of quarterhorse racing too.

Jeff True, director of marketing and simulcasting, has recently returned from South Korea where there is a race track at the 1988 Olympic Stadium and where it is hoped that Los Alamitos races will be simulcast. It is the idea of worldwide racing that gets Allred excited.

He also is worried. Allred calls Indian gambling “the scariest thing racing has to face.” Allred gives money to politicians who oppose Indian gambling because he thinks that by allowing gambling on Indian land, which is exempt from paying taxes, it might be the death of tax-paying racetracks.

Sometimes the politicians don’t want to accept the money because when they accept Allred’s money they often get picketed by anti-abortion supporters. This doesn’t bother Allred. He has done nothing in his life he isn’t proud of.

His career? “It’s been fine,” Allred says. His track? “I love this place,” he says. “The test now is to keep up with the times. People want to be entertained and you always have to change with the times.”

Allred figures he has about 600 racing animals. “Quarterhorses, thoroughbreds, appaloosas, mules, anything you can race,” Allred says. He is also convinced that his favorites, the quarterhorses, will be running another 50 years at Los Alamitos. “There is a place for this, I’m convinced,” Allred says.

But it’s time to stop talking now. The horses for the first race are on their way out and Allred has handicapping to be done.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.