The Los Alamitos Futurity on Saturday looks like a battle between two trainers with multiple Kentucky Derby victories, both on the lookout for more.
Bob Baffert – with six Derby wins – has 4-5 morning-line favorite Litmus Test (Juan Hernandez riding) as well as 5-1 Blacksmith (Kazushi Kimura) and 5-1 Provenance (Kyle Frey) in the $200,000, Grade II Los Al Futurity.
Doug O’Neill – with two Derbies – has 7-2 Acknowledgemeplz (Armando Ayuso), a ridgling trying to confirm he’s star material for owners Janie Buss, of the Lakers family, and Mark Davis, a San Diego electric power company president and restaurant owner.
“This is the time of year when you get a nice 2-year-old, turning 3, and you wake up dreaming of roses,” said O’Neill, who is going on 10 years since Nyquist (2016) joined I’ll Have Another (2012) as the barn’s Derby winners.
Acknowledgemeplz, a son of the Grade II-winning turf sprinter Buchero and the winless mare Starship Fantasy, goes into the 1 1/16-mile Los Al Futurity off two promising sprints at Santa Anita, a second-place finish to Desert Gate and a front-running win over Blacksmith, and what O’Neill says were encouraging training sessions.
“You can tell by his couple of runs he’s loaded with talent, and now it’s a matter of can he carry that talent around two turns,” O’Neill said on the phone Thursday. “He may turn out to be a tremendous one-turn horse, which would be just fine too. But there’s so many big races down the road if you get lucky enough to land on a horse who can do that.
“The biggest thing when they first go two turns is you don’t want them to use up all their energy on the first turn and have nothing late. Just want him to settle on the first turn and finish up strong. We’re optimistic.”
A field of six, including John Sadler’s Captivator (Hector Berrios) and Ruben Gomez’s American King (Geovanni Franco), will run in the last American graded stakes for 2-year-olds in 2025. It’s the eighth race, scheduled for 4 p.m.
Litmus Test, a son of Nyquist, ran fourth to Brant in the Del Mar Futurity and Ted Noffey in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and is one of Baffert’s already acknowledged band of Derby-trail candidates.
Acknowledgemeplz looks best among the soon-to-be 3-year-olds O’Neill has started in 2025, though the trainer said he has “three or four others we’re excited about but haven’t run yet.”
O’Neill won the Los Al Futurity in 2021 with 5-1 Slow Down Andy, a future Grade I winner. Like that horse, Acknowledgemeplz comes in with two starts, a win and a second.
“We’re excited about Saturday,” O’Neill said. “Hopefully he shows up the way he’s been training.”
THREE-TIME CHAMPION?
The Los Alamitos Futurity isn’t necessarily that track’s biggest race Saturday. The $700,000, Grade I Champion of Champions, featuring 10 major-race winners, has Empressum (Rodrigo Vallejo riding) going for a record-tying third victory in quarter-horse racing’s most prestigious event for 3-year-olds and up. Empressum won the 440-yard race in 2022 and 2024; Refrigerator three-peated in 1992-93-94.
But 7-year-old Empressum is winless since last year’s Champion of Champions and will be facing the three horses who’ve beaten him narrowly this year in 5-year-old Jeriko (Jesus Ayala), 6-year-old Scoops Dynasty (Jacob Enriquez) and 4-year-old Stanley Cartel (Juan Pulido), as well as 3-year-old star Fdd Dreams (Luis Martinez).
The Champion of Champions is the eighth race, scheduled for 8:48 p.m., on a Los Al nighttime card that starts at 6 p.m.
UNDER A CLOUD
Not even a race of that caliber can escape the shadow of the rising number of horse deaths at Los Alamitos this year, including three horses’ fatal injuries – in three separate races – on Nov. 23.
Ramiro Castillo, who was to saddle Stanley Cartel and Scoops Dynasty in the Champion of Champions, was stripped of racing, training and stabling privileges by Los Alamitos management Monday after the deaths of five horses in the trainer’s care in the past seven months. Champions Run was euthanized after being pulled up early with an injury in a race Nov. 23 and leaving in the equine ambulance. Four other deaths resulted from non-musculoskeletal causes, according to California Horse Racing Board data.
Castillo had worked for trainer Monty Arrossa, taking over the stable earlier this year after Arrossa himself was banned by Los Al following horses’ positive tests for a prohibited bronchodilator.
With Castillo barred, Stanley Cartel and Scoops Dynasty will run in the Champion of Champions in the name of trainer Luke Lindsey.
MOORE AND MORE
The International Jockey Challenge at Happy Valley Racecourse in Hong Kong is hardly a definitive contest for top riders, but it does tend to produce deserving winners.
Wednesday’s 33rd edition of the promotion, awarding points to jockeys for results with randomly assigned horses in four races, was won for a record-tying third time by Britain’s Ryan Moore. Moore returned to action just last week from the broken leg that kept him from Del Mar and his perennial appearance in the winner’s circle after Breeders’ Cup turf races.
Not to be overlooked was California-based Umberto Rispoli, representing the United States. Rispoli finished tied for sixth in the field of 12 jockeys but did well considering the kind of horses he drew. Rispoli and nearly 6-1 Tourbillon Golfer came in second to one of Moore’s two winners, and Rispoli’s other three mounts all outran their long odds.
OVAL AND OUT
The National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame displays a map of “active tracks” in North America, and it’s jarring to look at these days even if you’ve been following the closures of tracks in California and elsewhere.
The increasingly barren racing landscape of the western U.S. and Canada lost another track with the announcement last Friday that Hastings Park in Vancouver was going out of business immediately. This leaves British Columbia without racing – though simulcast betting and a casino continue to operate – and is expected to cost hundreds of jobs at the facility and, the Vancouver Sun reported, devastate hay producers, feed suppliers, veterinarians and horse transporters.
The announcement came after BC officials withdrew slot-machine revenue that has helped to sustain Hastings Park racing. This development 1,200 miles away is chilling for racing fans in California, one of the places where tracks are trying to survive without casino revenue.
141 DAYS TO THE DERBY
The East Coast’s final graded stakes for 2-year-old males in 2025 was Saturday’s Remsen at Aqueduct. Paladin, a son of Gun Runner trained by Chad Davis, lived up to his 9-5 odds and $1.9 million yearling-auction price to win by two lengths with jockey Flavien Prat. Second was Todd Pletcher-trained Renegade, by Into Mischief, with Irad Ortiz Jr. Paladin had won his debut through Renegade’s disqualification for bumping.
Speed figures weren’t fast, but a Grade II win at 1⅛ miles confirms Paladin’s status among soon-to-be-3-year-olds. He was the 22-1 fifth choice, behind Ted Noffey, Further Ado, Napoleon Solo and Boyd, in the November round of future betting on the May 2 Kentucky Derby.
Follow horse racing correspondent Kevin Modesti at X.com/KevinModesti.
LOS ALAMITOS LEADERS
(Through Sunday)
Jockeys / Wins
Kazushi Kimura / 4
Armando Ayuso / 4
Juan Hernandez / 3
Adrian Escobedo / 2
Geovanni Franco / 2
Tiago Pereira / 2
Trainers / Wins
John Sadler / 2
George Papaprodromou / 2
Steve Knapp / 2
Bob Baffert / 2
(18 tied) / 1
UPCOMING STAKES
LOS ALAMITOS
Daytime Saturday
• $200,000, Grade II Los Alamitos Futurity, 2-year-olds, 1 1/16 miles
Nighttime Saturday
• $700,000, Grade I Champion of Champions, quarter horses, 3-year-olds and up, 440 yards
Daytime Sunday
• $100,000 King Glorious Stakes, California-bred 2-year-olds, 1 mile
Nighttime Sunday
• $1.8 million Los Alamitos Two Million Futurity, quarter horses, 2-year-olds, 400 yards
• $35,000 Los Alamitos Juvenile Stakes, quarter horses, 2-year-olds, 400 yards
