Snow Chief Contender With Native Diver Connections

by DEBRA GINSBURG

If Calkins Road succeeds in crossing the wire first in Sunday's $250,000 Snow Chief Stakes, he will not only be scoring his first stakes victory he will also be bringing a familiar set of silks back from another era.

The white silks with blue polka dots were carried to many memorable Hollywood Park stakes victories by Native Diver, the most noteworthy being his three consecutive triumphs in the Hollywood Gold Cup. The Diver passed the $1 million mark in earnings with his third Gold Cup victory in 1967, the first California-bred to attain this status. Calkins Road is a homebred racing for Tom Shapiro, grandson of Native Diver's owner, Louis K. Shapiro.

As a teenager, Tom witnessed many of Diver's greatest wins first hand. Now, 35 years later, he has followed his grandfather as a Thoroughbred breeder and owner. He campaigns a small stable of runners with his wife, Debbie, and they own a 10-acre ranch in Los Olivos, in the Santa Ynez Valley.

"Our grandparents had a farm we went to every summer," Shapiro recalled in a Daily Racing Form article. "Buster Millerick was one of my childhood heroes. I used to spend summers walking hots."

Shapiro drove harness horses for awhile during the 1980s, but eventually gave that up. As an owner of a tent and canvas company in Los Angeles, he started investing in Thoroughbreds when the business started to do well. His company recently provided structures for the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Named for the location of the Shapiro ranch, Calkins Road was sired by Illinois Storm, out of the Lost Code mare Little Code, and is a grandson of the first horse Shapiro bought. He broke his maiden at Santa Anita on Feb. 7 and was a close second to Gobi Dan, one of his Snow Chief rivals, in an allowance race a month later and Tom has been pointing him for the Snow Chief ever since.

The Snow Chief is expected to have a large field, with none of the probables having won a stakes race. In addition to Calkins Road and Gobi Dan, they include California Goal, Duddly Doo Run, Enorme, Groom On The Run, Highly Suspect, Hot War, Menacing Dennis, Modernist, Political Rhetoric, Roberto's Show and Wagon Train.