Mixed-Breed’s Long Season Opens
The mixed-breed, year-long season at Los Alamitos Race Course opens tonight, the start of a meet that runs through next Dec. 22.
Los Alamitos is mainly a quarter horse track, but races for thoroughbreds, Arabians, appaloosas and paints will also be carded Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights until Jan. 10, when Thursday night events will be added.
The new season comes on the heels of a 181-night meet that ended Dec. 16.
This year’s meet produced average on-track nightly attendance of 1,516 and an overall average handle of $1.2 million, second highest in track history. Attendance was up 2.5% over 2000.
The first important stake of the new season will be the Charger Bar Handicap on Jan. 19, a $125,000 race that might draw Tiny First Effort, the winner of this year’s Southern California Derby.
Jockey Ramon Sanchez and trainer Paul Jones led their respective standings this year. Sanchez rode 166 quarter horse winners, three more than Joe Badilla, who was injured earlier in the year and then missed the final weekend because of a broken jaw. Jones saddled 163 quarter horse winners, breaking the record of 155 he set in 1998.
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