Trainer Cardoza Enjoys the Ride

They don’t run that many $1-million races in the quarter horse game, but Danny Cardoza rode the winner of one--21 years ago--and now he’s on the threshold of winning another as a trainer.

Winning a $1-million race as both a jockey and a trainer would make quarter horse history, but Cardoza is more concerned about preparing his formidable 2-year-old gelding, Dashing Knud, for next Saturday’s Los Alamitos Million Futurity than he is about the record book.

Dashing Knud, a muscular gray who looks as if someone emptied a bucket of whitewash in his face, has won seven consecutive starts, his most recent the Million trials on Dec. 1, when he was the fastest of the 10 qualifiers with a 400-yard clocking of 19.78 seconds.

Cardoza knows what this means.

“He might as well have a bull’s-eye painted on him,” the ex-jockey said. “Because when you’re the fastest, you know those other nine horses will be using you as a target.”

In his heyday, Cardoza, now 51, rode Pie In The Sky to victory in the 1979 All American Futurity at Ruidoso Downs in New Mexico. Long before thoroughbred racing ran its first $1-million race--the Arlington Million in 1981--Ruidoso was offering a $1-million purse for the All American at its modest track.

When Cardoza retired as a jockey in 1992, he had won 2,528 races, still more than any rider at Los Alamitos. Overall, he’s credited with 2,896 wins, and his purse total of almost $25 million puts him third on the career list, behind Jacky Martin and Kenny Hart.

“My [total] wins might be closer to 3,500,” said Cardoza, alluding to the American Quarter Horse Assn.’s incomplete records. The association began keeping official records in 1970.

In 1971, Cardoza scored one of his first important wins, riding Blondy Rockette to victory in the Miss Princess Invitational, a race now known as the Mildred N. Vessels Memorial Handicap. Mildred Vessels’ son, Scoop, is co-owner of Dashing Knud with Gorden Knudsen, an insurance executive from Tremonton, Utah, and the breeder of the horse.

At Los Alamitos, you’ll find Cardoza’s name as a winning rider of most of the track’s major races. He won the Champion of Champions twice, with Dashs Dream in 1984 and Gold Coast Express in 1986. Both horses were voted world champion, the quarter horse world’s equivalent of horse of the year. Another of Cardoza’s favorite mounts was First Down Dash, whom he rode in the horse’s 2-year-old season. First Down Dash is one of the grandsires of Dashing Knud.

Cardoza won the Los Alamitos championship five times and is a three-time riding winner of the Ed Burke Memorial Futurity, a race that Dashing Knud won on June 28, in effect announcing that he had arrived as a serious contender in the juvenile division.

Splitting his four previous starts, Dashing Knud won the Burke at 29-1, beating a heavily favored filly, Secret Card, by three-quarters of a length.

Eight years ago, already envisioning a training career, Cardoza rode his last race.

“Why?” he said Friday, repeating the question. “I was too old. It was never weight. I could do the weight today if I had to ride again. But my knees were gone, and I had taken a pounding over the years. A broken ankle. A broken wrist. A broken [breastbone], and several concussions. It was time.”

He knew his competitive juices would continue to stir.

“That part of it, I was bound to miss,” he said. “That’s why I hoped I could train. It’s not the same as riding, but otherwise it’s as close to the competitive part as you can get.”

He worked two years for Ed Allred, the owner of Los Alamitos, breaking young horses and training them off the farm, before he became a private trainer for Vessels, whose father founded the Orange County track and ran the first parimutuel meet there in 1951. Cardoza trains 15 horses that Scoop Vessels either owns outright or races in partnerships.

One of them, of course, is Dashing Knud, who was named after and was bred by Knudsen, but who is actually the result of a foal-sharing arrangement between Vessels and the Utah man. Vessels and Knudsen met at a horse sale in Utah. Knudsen, 36, had been introduced to the sport through his cousin Larry, a quarter horse jockey. Vessels was interested in Angel Layne, a broodmare owned by Knudsen, who had already produced two horses of stakes caliber. Knudsen agreed to mate Angel Layne with Fishers Dash, a son of First Down Dash, who had won the 1987 world championship for Vessels.

“At the start, [Dashing Knud] was very rank,” Cardoza said. “He acted like a stud, so we had to [geld] him. Both owners were more interested in developing a racehorse than they were in having a stallion down the road.”

Dusty Stimpson has been his only jockey as Dashing Knud has produced eight wins, one second and one third in 10 races.

“He pulled away from the field with about 200 yards left,” Stimpson said of Dashing Knud’s effort in the Million trials. “Then he pricked up his ears. I rode him a little bit harder at that point just to keep him honest. I feel like I’m riding an older horse.”

If Cardoza hadn’t seen Dashing Knud’s foal papers, he would insist he was training a 4-year-old.

“He’s a very intelligent horse,” the trainer said. “He’s easy to train, and does everything he has to do.”

Horse Racing Notes

Trainer Mel Stute underwent quadruple heart-bypass surgery Friday and is expected to be released from the hospital Monday. . . . Son Of A Pistol, third in the race last year, will try to become the oldest winner of the Vernon O. Underwood Handicap when the $100,000, six-furlong stake is run Sunday at Hollywood Park. Son Of A Pistol, a stablemate of Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner Kona Gold, is an 8-year-old. The Underwood, first run in 1981, has never been won by a horse older than 5. . . . Behrens, who as a 6-year-old earned $1.7 million, even though he won only one race, has been retired to stud. Overall, Behrens had nine wins, eight seconds and three thirds in 27 races and earned $4.5 million.