Hall Has Eyes Trained on a Repeat

The first three times Connie Hall applied for a quarter horse training license, the stewards at Los Alamitos turned her down.

“I was divorced and had long blond hair,” Hall said. “Those were the reasons. There were quite a few of us in those days, doing all the work around the race track, but not able to get licensed. It was strictly the good-old-boy system then.”

On her fourth try, in 1972, Hall got her license.

“The stewards realized that we weren’t a bunch of hooligans, that we were serious about working around horses,” she said. “It was good to be able to work at the track without having to hide every time somebody official came around.”

Hall started with four horses. From that inauspicious nucleus, she’s become one of Los Alamitos’ most successful trainers, with 654 victories, 61 of them in stakes races.

Her barn is usually packed with 35 or 40 horses, and one of them for the last three years has been A Ransom, a 5-year-old gelding who was voted world champion (horse of the year) for 2000 and has made no missteps in his campaign to repeat this year.

In a 10-horse field that includes Tailor Fit, the 1999 world champion, and Corona Kool, the mare that finished second to A Ransom in the Vessels Maturity on Aug. 4, Hall’s horse has drawn the outside post for tonight’s $200,000 Los Alamitos Invitational Championship at 440 yards.

Also running is Stoli, the only 3-year-old in the field, who won the All American Derby at Ruidoso Downs earlier this month.

A year ago, when he also broke from the outside, A Ransom won this race by a head, for victory No. 4 in a streak that has reached eight races, but he continues to need to prove himself. In the Vessels, Corona Kool was bet down to favoritism and A Ransom went off the second choice.

Hall suspects he is ready for this assignment. A week ago, in his last important workout for tonight, A Ransom clicked off 350 yards in 17.90 seconds.

“I thought he might do 18 and something,” Hall said. “We didn’t get him on the track until about 9:30. [Jockey Carlos Bautista] got tied up in traffic and had trouble getting here. But Ransom knew something was up, and then he threw down that 17.9. He should run a great race.”

The eight-race win streak started at Los Alamitos in June 2000, on the night Bautista replaced Jerry Yoakum as A Ransom’s regular rider. Yoakum, given the chance to ride A Ransom when Bautista chose another mount in a race in October 1999, won one of three starts before Bautista took over. Together, he and A Ransom haven’t lost since.

A Ransom, who races for John and Kathie Bobenrieth of Costa Mesa, has earned $586,516 with 15 wins, two seconds and two thirds in 24 starts. He clinched last year’s world championship with a win in December in the Champion of Champions, then underwent arthroscopic surgery on both knees. Even without the surgery, Hall probably wouldn’t have brought him back until June anyway. She sees no reason to vary from the basic plan that worked last year.

“I’m lucky that John and Kathie care more about the good of the horse than anything else,” Hall said. “Other owners probably would have wanted me to run him more, and 10 years ago I would have been tempted to run him more too. But it’s been better for him that we’ve picked our spots. This way we know he’s going to be right every time he runs.”

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Officer, undefeated in four starts and the favorite for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Belmont Park on Oct. 27, will prep for that race in New York after all. Ahmed Salman, the Saudi Arabian prince who races Officer, wants to run him in the $500,000 Champagne at Belmont on Oct. 6 because that’s a Grade I race and Salman wants to give New Yorkers a chance to see his colt run. Earlier this week, Bob Baffert, Officer’s trainer, said that the colt would remain in California to run in the $250,000 Norfolk Stakes at Santa Anita a week from today. The Norfolk is a Grade II race.

Guided Tour in the $400,000 Classic, Spain in the $200,000 Turfway Breeders’ Cup, City Zip in the $150,000 Sprint and the Wayne Lukas-trained entry of Gold Dollar and Truman’s Raider in the $100,000 Juvenile are among the favorites on Kentucky Cup day today at Turfway Park.

Squirtle Squirt, who’s won seven of 12 starts, races seven sprint rivals in the $300,000 Vosburgh at Belmont.... Takarian, ninth in the Arlington Million last month, will try to recover in the $200,000 Bay Meadows Breeders’ Cup Handicap.

Budroyale, second in the stake in 1998, and Irisheyesareflying are the 121-pound high weights Sunday in the $100,000 Ralph M. Hinds Pomona Invitational Handicap at Fairplex Park, where the Los Angeles County Fair’s 18-day meet ends Monday. Others running Sunday are Red Eye, Flying Rudolph, Grey Memo, Just Ruler, L’Effaceur and Indiahoma.