Nguyen Stakes Claim in Arcadia

The fishing boat was less than 100 feet long, crammed with 140 Vietnamese refugees and piloted by a so-called captain clueless about their destination. There were rations that might last three days, and toward the end of the third day, after a journey of more than 500 miles across the South China Sea, this desperate party found the coastline of Malaysia.

Calvin Nguyen, then 9 years old, was on that boat, with his aunt and uncle and a 12-year-old brother. Left behind in Vietnam were two other Nguyen boys and their parents. Their father, a South Vietnamese Navy man, was in his seventh year of what would be a 10-year incarceration in a POW camp.

“We got on that boat because we were looking for a better future,” Nguyen says now of the 1983 journey. “We were in Malaysia for about a month before we were sent to a camp in Indonesia. Six months after that, through the intervention of the Catholic church, we wound up in Florida. There we were, absolute strangers. It was incredible. We didn’t speak a word of English, those around us didn’t know Vietnamese, but what we had going for us was that we all shared a common faith.”

Nguyen’s first visit to a racetrack was also large dollops of serendipity--more about that later--and his claiming of an undistinguished gelding, his first horse, 10 years later has resulted in a longshot chance at winning Saturday’s $1-million Santa Anita Handicap. Freedom Crest is 15-1 on the morning line, and probably will go off at an even higher mutuel, but double-digit payoffs in the Big ‘Cap are not uncommon, and this year, with the expected favorite, Mizzen Mast, on the sidelines, nicely priced challengers abound.

“It was a mixed blessing when Mizzen Mast came out,” said the 28-year-old Nguyen, who has moved from his brother’s vitamin export business to a career as a stockbroker. “Had he run, there probably would have been only nine or 10 starters, and now there are 14. Traffic could be a factor. The horse with the best trip will probably win.”

In 1999, Freedom Crest had run twice for trainer Tony Diaz when he ran him, for $32,000, in a six-furlong claiming race at Hollywood Park. Nguyen (pronounced Win) went to the track with his eye on a better-bred horse, Play Taps, in the same race. But Nguyen’s trainer, Richard Baltas, was attracted to Freedom Crest.

“He fell in love with the horse,” Nguyen said. “He said that he looked like a runner. So we claimed him on that instinct.”

Running second the day he was claimed, Freedom Crest ran four more times without winning.

“We were having second thoughts,” Nguyen said. “Play Taps went on to win a maiden race by something like seven lengths, and then moved into allowance company and also did well.”

In his eighth career start, in December 1999, Freedom Crest finally landed in the winner’s circle. He could have been claimed for $40,000 by other trainers that day, and Baltas never ran him for a claiming tag again.

In 2000, shrewdly spotted by Baltas, the horse had four wins, three seconds and one third in eight starts, earning $147,360. In January 2001, Baltas tossed Freedom Crest into stakes company and he won the Grade II San Pasqual Handicap at Santa Anita.

The season then had a bittersweet ending as Freedom Crest won another Grade II, the Goodwood Handicap at Santa Anita, before running last in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Belmont Park.

Four months later, in his first start since then, Freedom Crest will be asked Saturday to run 11/4 miles for only the second time.

“He had the 13 [outside] post in New York, and maybe I ran him back a little too soon,” Baltas said. “I know it’s a lot to ask of him, but he’s fit enough and he’s beaten better horses before. We’re just happy to have a shot in the race.”

Nguyen, who moved with his aunt and uncle to California after spending nine months in Florida, was reunited with his mother but didn’t really meet his father until 1990, when he was 17. His parents live with two of their sons in Orange County.

In 1989, Nguyen and some friends, unable to get tickets for an Angel game because Nolan Ryan, nearing a strikeout milestone, was pitching for the visiting Texas Rangers, went to the quarter horses at Los Alamitos instead. Nguyen netted $12 with the first bet he made, went home with a profit of $32 and said to himself that he’d like to own a horse some day.

He now has six at Hollywood Park with Baltas, who met Nguyen through a mutual friend at Los Alamitos.

“I had been around,” said Baltas, 40, who between stints at the track once worked as a bartender in Huntington Beach. “The last job I had had at the track was as an assistant to [Richard Mandella]. At the time I met Calvin, I was starving.”

Nguyen chuckled as he recalled his entry into racing. “Here I am,” he said, “thinking about buying a horse, and I’m with a trainer who doesn’t have any horses.”

The downside to running in the Santa Anita Handicap is that Freedom Crest could finish last again, as he did in New York. But the 5-year-old gelding has already earned more than $600,000, and along with it the reputation as one of racing’s biggest bargains.

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