Laffit the Horse a Big Winner Too

An appearance by Laffit Pincay at Fairplex Park in Pomona is as rare as the cotton-candy stand running out of the pink sweet stuff. The Hall of Fame jockey, who didn’t ride at the Los Angeles County Fair at all last year, only occasionally drops in, and made some noise there five years ago when he won a pair of stakes.

Resting after a successful Del Mar season, Pincay isn’t expected to ride at the marathon 17-day Pomona run that started Friday, but his namesake arrived at Fairplex with both barrels blazing. Named after Pincay by his Canadian owner, Laffit the 3-year-old colt gunned down four rivals through the track’s 660-foot stretch to win the Foothill Stakes by one length over From A To Z. The opening-day crowd was estimated at 8,250.

Laffit, owned by James Whyte and trained by Frank Olivares, who used to ride against Pincay, paid $26.40 to win as he ended an eight-race losing streak and won for the first time in almost six months.

Mighty David, the 3-2 favorite, finished seventh. The stewards disallowed a foul claim by Mighty David’s jockey, Martin Pedroza, against From A To Z and Pickled Bay, the fourth-place finisher.

Ridden by Iggy Puglisi, Laffit completed 6 1/2 furlongs in 1:16 1/5.

“There was a lot of trouble in the race,” Puglisi said. “When we got to the [three-sixteenths pole], horses started to bunch up, and this is a tight racetrack. I was sitting right behind those horses, so once we got past that trouble point, I kind of angled my horse to the outside.”

*

Black Ruby is 2-5 and Taz is even money for their $10,000, winner-take-all mule match race that concludes today’s card.

This will be the first mule race in the 64-year racing history of the fair. Last Sunday at Del Mar, in the first mule race ever staged there, Black Ruby beat Taz by two lengths, for the 10-year-old’s 48th win in 55 starts. Black Ruby’s only loss this year came at Sacramento, where Taz, with an eight-pound weight advantage, won by a head on Aug. 24.

The mules carried equal weights in the non-betting race at Del Mar, but Taz, an 8-year-old, will have a five-pound edge in the weights today.

There will be win betting at Fairplex.

*

Trainer Mike Mitchell, who beat Grey Memo with Literal Prowler in last year’s Phil D. Shepherd, will try to win the stake again today with J.T.’s Song, a 5-year-old gelding that he claimed by Del Mar for $50,000 last month.