The Southern California circuit takes its annual trip to Cypress for the Los Angeles County Meet. These will be the first exclusively thoroughbred race cards at Los Alamitos this year, as the typical Saturday and Sunday cards are mixed with quarter horse racing.
The Los Angeles County Fair Meet is now held in Orange County, following racing’s new tradition of running inaptly named races and meets (they run the Arlington Million in Virginia, people). All jokes aside, Los Al fills an important role in the Southern California racing ecosystem, giving Santa Anita some much needed rest after a long meet, and filling those dates before Del Mar has access to its race dates.
The Bertrando Stakes is the feature and nightcap today, a 1 mile dirt race for California-bred horses. Bertrando was one of the most accomplished California-bred horses of the 1990s, winner of a graded stakes at age 2, 3, 4, and 5, including a trio of Grade 1 wins. Trained by the late John Shirreffs and ridden by Hall of Famer Gary Stevens, he won 9 races in his career, with 7 of those wins in Grade 1s or 2s. His resume is the kind that lands the connections in the Hall of Fame…