Mullins Among Trainers With Los Alamitos Starters

The question of where some West Coast horses might run amid widespread meet suspensions and cancellations caused by COVID-19 has at least been partially answered: Los Alamitos Race Course.

The Cypress, Calif., track, which is currently running a meet of Quarter Horses and Thoroughbreds, has not been shuttered by local health departments, like Golden Gate Fields and Santa Anita Park. At Los Alamitos, which is under the regulation of a different health department that oversees Orange County, racing continues behind closed doors, restricted to essential personnel.

Thoroughbred horsemen, lacking their normal options, have shown up in force for racing there April 10-11. Five of eight races Friday are either 4 1/2-furlong or 870-yard (about a half-mile) races, filled almost exclusively with Thoroughbreds, and five more 870-yard races of Thoroughbreds are part of the Saturday night nine-race program. 

Santa Anita-based trainer Jeff Mullins has two horses running at Los Alamitos Saturday: K P Indy (race 2) and Into Mystic (race 3), both morning-line favorites. He entered two more who were initially also-eligibles, but they were excluded after failing to draw into oversubscribed races.

Other Santa Anita trainers have entered horses, as have horsemen from Golden Gate and Turf Paradise, whose meet came to an early conclusion because of the pandemic.

Into Mystic comes by way of Sunland Park, a track in New Mexico that ended its meet prematurely in March. The 4-year-old daughter of Into Mischief  won a pair of allowance races in New Mexico during the winter and was third in the Bold Ego Handicap for owners George Chris Coleman and Brad King. She raced in Kentucky as a 2-year-old, winning a maiden race at Keeneland in October 2018.

She will race for an $18,000 purse Saturday in an allowance for fillies and mares who have not won a race at 870 yards. Racing there received a purse hike, Mullins said. A week ago, a similar race was worth $12,000. 

"The Los Al deal is just something to try to generate a little income for some of these owners, help them pay their bills so they don't take their horses home," Mullins said. "It's been raining here for a week, and we haven't been able to breeze anything. I told the owners, 'Look, we can head over there and get paid to breeze our horses a half-mile, hopefully generate a little money, and help pay the bills.'"

Not all of his horses are well suited to running at Los Alamitos. River Boyne, for example, is a grade-1 winning turf miler, and Mullins' only option for the millionaire at the moment is to "put him in bubble wrap in a padded stall."

Mullins expressed frustration at the uncertainty of when racing will resume full scale in California.

"You have four or five clients call every day, want to know the same thing. All you can tell them is, 'I haven't heard anything,'" he said. "That doesn't go over very well."

The Thoroughbred Owners of California has a conference call scheduled for its membership Friday at 11 a.m. PT to update racing's response to the pandemic and the outlook for racing and training in California. Participants include TOC chair Nick Alexander, TOC director Gary Fenton, TOC president and CEO Greg Avioli, and Craig Fravel, the CEO of racing operations for The Stronach Group, which operates Santa Anita and Golden Gate.