LOS ALAMITOS : Season Is New but the Names Are the Same

The Los Alamitos Race Course’s 1995 quarter horse meeting begins Friday night amid hopes for as good a meeting as last year’s.

“I’m hoping that we can duplicate our success of last year, when we had the best meet in years,” said Dick Feinberg, general manager of the Horseman’s Quarter Horse Racing Assn., which runs the meeting.

Feinberg was referring to the $1,123,102 average handle recorded last year, the second-highest in the track’s 43-year history.

Los Alamitos was home to a number of national champions last year, most of whom will be returning.

Trainer Blane Schvaneveldt, who has won the champion trainer award every year since its inception in 1985, has returned with about 50 horses to try for yet another title.

Among Schvaneveldt’s most notable horses in recent years has been Refrigerator, the two-time world champion who became the only three-time winner of the Champion of Champions at the end of last year’s meet. Refrigerator, the first quarter horse to surpass $2 million in earnings, may be back in Schvaneveldt’s barn to try for a third world champion title.

The gelding, now a 7-year-old, spent the winter at owner Jim Helzer’s ranch in Texas, where he underwent surgery in January to remove bone chips.

If Refrigerator returns, he inevitably will face 1994 world champion Down With Debt, the tough mare who took the world title away from Refrigerator last year.

Down With Debt, trained by Charlie Bloomquist, is expected to begin training within the next week. The 5-year-old mare was recently bred to Strawfly Special and will be returned to the racetrack after the embryo is transferred to a donor mare. Down With Debt’s 1995 debut may not be until July, however, in the Grade 1 Vessels Maturity.

The Bloomquist stable also is home to another champion, Ah Sigh, last year’s champion 2-year-old filly.

Champion owner Abigail Kawananakoa has horses in training at Los Alamitos, and champion jockey John Creager has been galloping horses in preparation for opening night.

Los Alamitos will race this weekend on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, then four nights a week, Thursday through Sunday, for the rest of the meet. Post time Thursday through Saturday is 7:15 p.m., with a 5 p.m. first post on Sundays. After June 11, Sunday’s first post will be 6 p.m.