LOS ALAMITOS : Refrigerator Hot on Championship Trail

No matter how Blane Schvaneveldt feels today as he prepares Refrigerator for the $250,000 Champion of Champions at Los Alamitos, trainer Bubba Cascio knows what it is like.

Cascio trained Dash For Cash, who won the Champion of Champions in 1976 and 1977, the only horse with two victories in the race’s 22 years.

Dash For Cash was as dominant two decades ago as Refrigerator is today. In 1976, Dash For Cash won the Champion of Champions at 3, setting the track record of 21.17 seconds.

Cascio, who trains at Trinity Meadows near Ft. Worth, still remembers the feeling of saddling Dash For Cash in the 1977 Champion of Champions in what would be his last start before being sent to the stud barn.

“That was the most pressure I’ve ever felt,” Cascio said. “He was syndicated, and there were a lot of people watching. Getting him outrun would not have been to his benefit. I knew he wasn’t as sharp as he had been. It was still in the back of my mind that he could get beat.”

Dash For Cash won the race by 1 1/4 lengths, ending his career with 21 victories in 25 starts. He retired to Phillips Ranch in Frisco, Tex., where he lived until a few months ago, when he was moved to the 6666 Ranch in Guthrie, Tex.

“It was gratifying to win the race twice,” Cascio said. “I didn’t think there was an animal that could outrun him at 440 yards.”

Dash For Cash, 20, is quarter horse racing’s most successful stallion, siring the earners of almost $34 million. He still commands one of the highest stud fees in quarter horse racing, even though his son, First Down Dash, the 1987 Champion of Champions winner, leads the stallion list for the third consecutive year.

A victory by Refrigerator in tonight’s Champion of Champions will clinch world champion honors for the gelding for the second consecutive year. It would be his 10th stakes victory and make him quarter horse racing’s richest horse. In 26 starts, he has won 19 races, finished second six times and third once. He has earned $1,823,257, only $46,169 behind all-time leader Eastex.

Refrigerator made his debut at 2, in January of 1990, winning a trial for the Poor Boy Futurity at Ross Meadows in Ada, Okla. The race was restricted to horses whose stallions stood for fees of $1,500 or less. After he finished second in the final, which was held in late January, his owners did not start him again until the spring, at Remington Park in Oklahoma City.

He had the fastest qualifying time for the Remington Park Futurity, but bled from the lungs in the trials. Track stewards told trainer Rodney Reed, who conditioned the gelding at the time, that they wanted to see a satisfactory workout before the finals. Reed refused to run Refrigerator and scratched him from the final.

Word then spread about Refrigerator, and the owners began weighing offers. Before mid-June, Refrigerator was sold to Jim Helzer of Arlington, Tex., for a reported $150,000. A second in the Heritage Place Futurity in early July, without evidence of bleeding, convinced Helzer to put up an additional $50,000 to make Refrigerator eligible for the All American Futurity trials at Ruidoso Downs.

At Ruidoso, Refrigerator not only qualified for the $2-million futurity, but won easily, earning Helzer $1 million. He was later voted champion 2-year-old of 1990.

In 1991, Refrigerator won four of eight starts, but only one stakes--the Kansas Derby. The grind of the Ruidoso summer schedule that includes three sets of trials and finals over slightly more than three months caught up with him. He ran second in the Rainbow and All American derbies after leading late in both races.

Refrigerator made his California debut that fall, winning a trial for the Champion of Champions, but finished third as the 4-5 favorite in the final. At year’s end, he was voted champion 3-year-old gelding, but lost the overall 3-year-old championship to Takin On The Cash, who won four stakes.

Helzer chose a different regimen for Refrigerator’s 1992 campaign. Instead of running him in traditional quarter horse races with trials and finals, Helzer chose invitational and major handicaps, which often carried purses in excess of $100,000 and usually did not have trials.

Refrigerator won four of five starts in 1992. The only setbacks that year were a second in the Go Man Go Handicap and a withdrawal at the Breeders Championship Classic, after he flipped over in the starting gate moments before the start. The season ended with a victory in the Champion of Champions, Schvaneveldt’s sixth.

This year, Helzer has followed a similar schedule. The gelding began the year at Ruidoso, under the care of trainer Sleepy Gilbreath. He won the trials and final of the World’s Championship Classic, which carried a purse of $246,000, making it the nation’s second-richest race for older horses. He was shipped to California in September and has won the Los Alamitos Championship and the Breeders Championship Classic.

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The field for tonight’s Champion of Champions was decided in two ways. The winners of five major races received automatic berths and the remainder of the field was determined by time trials, held Nov. 27. Refrigerator won four of the five races that included automatic berths--the 1992 Champion of Champions, the World’s Championship Classic, the Los Alamitos Championship and the Breeders Championship Classic--which meant a record eight berths were at stake in the trials.

Deceptively, who earned an automatic berth by winning the Rainbow Derby, was scratched Thursday, giving trial qualifier Those Were The Days a spot in the final.

Refrigerator’s dominance is likely to force officials to change the selection process for next year.

Tonight, Refrigerator will also race Down With Debt, Rare Form, Dash Master Miss, Six To Five, Elie Rey Beduino, Childish, Sir Goldminer and Mongoose First.

Cascio considered sending a son of Dash For Cash, Some Dasher, to California for the Champion of Champions. But he decided not to when he realized the horse would have to run in the trials and then face a fresh Refrigerator two weeks later.

Cascio said he might send the horse West in 1994. He won’t attend tonight’s race because of his work at Trinity Meadows, but he thinks he knows the winner.

“I think it’s a one-horse race,” he said. “We here in Texas feel that Refrigerator will beat them by 1 1/2 or two lengths and that (will) be all of it.”

Los Alamitos Notes

At this point, no agreements have been reached between harness promoters and Los Alamitos officials for a harness meeting at Los Alamitos. The track will probably remain dark until the spring. Quarter horses, Arabians and thoroughbreds have been granted dates from mid-April to December of 1994, but Los Alamitos officials might seek California Horse Racing Board approval to move the opening date up a month if no harness meeting is held.