No Trivial Win for Reba’s Gold

When Alex Trebek bought a farm in Central California six years ago, racing horses wasn’t the objective. But Sunday, there was the host of “Jeopardy” at Hollywood Park, leaving the winner’s circle and talking about sending a horse to Japan for a $2-million race.

Trebek’s Reba’s Gold won the $72,850 Steinlen Stakes, and he and Rollin Baugh, the bloodstock agent who had picked out the horse and bought him for $125,000 three years ago, are now planning to run in the Japan Cup Dirt Stakes on Nov. 23.

When Trebek bought Cardiff Stud Farm in 1996, he leased it back to the Fred Sahadi family, which had owned the property. “But then when their lease ran out, they didn’t want to renew,” Trebek said. “So that’s what catapulted me into the horse racing business.”

Reba’s Gold pushed his earnings past the $500,000 mark by coming back in the stretch to beat Mercenary by a head.

“When [Mercenary] came at me, he came really quick,” jockey David Flores said of Reba’s Gold. “I was kind of surprised....I hit him once left-handed and I could feel that he was [coming] back.”

Because of recent heavy rain, the Steinlen was moved from the grass to the dirt.

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The head of mutuels at the New York Racing Assn., which operates Aqueduct, Belmont Park and Saratoga, has indicated that those tracks might follow Churchill Downs’ lead and shut off betting before the start of the gate-loading process for each race.

“We are probably going to have to follow suit,” Vince Hogan told the New York Post. “It will eliminate those late [betting] flashes that confuse the public. We’re all thinking of doing it, although it will hurt the big bettors, who like to see the latest flash before making their bets.”

Beginning this week, Churchill Downs’ tracks, which include Hollywood Park, will introduce early shutdowns of betting, perhaps a minute to a minute and a half before each race starts. The new policy begins Thursday at Hollywood.