Alphabet Kisses Primed for Sunshine Millions

ARCADIA, Calif. (Jan. 13, 2005) -- For years, John Harris has observed a routine whenever one of his horses is running at Santa Anita.

A licensed pilot, he equips one of the two twin-engine planes he hangars at his farm in Coalinga and flies to El Monte Airport, a private airfield 15 minutes from the front gates of the Arcadia track. At the end of the race day, he flies back.

“Otherwise, it’s about a 3 ½-hour drive each way,” he said. “That’s a lot of time out of the day and I have a lot to do.”

He’s been flying for nearly 30 years, only a little less than the number of years he’s been in the thoroughbred business.

Harris, 61, has taken to the skies to watch all manner of horses he’s bred and owned—fast ones, slow ones, old ones, young ones, stakes runners and those in for a tag.

So it would hardly have been a surprise to see him at Santa Anita on Dec. 27, second day of the track’s 70th winter-spring meeting.

The $250,000 La Brea Stakes was the feature race on the card and Alphabet Kisses, bred and owned by Harris, was in the field for the Grade I, seven-furlong event, with fillies running as 3-year-olds for the last time.

The racing strip in Arcadia was rated “off” because of recent rain and in central California Harris was having misgivings about the trip south.

“I had promised someone else the use of one of the planes for the day,” he recalled.

“I still could have taken the other plane or driven down. But the weather wasn’t good and my filly was a longshot and Yearly Report was going to be the strong favorite. I thought Alphabet Kisses would do well to hit the board. Besides, we’d just been down there the day before for the opening day of the meet. So I decided to stay home.”

Yearly Report scratched and you know the rest.

Alphabet Kisses, a gray daughter of Alphabet Soup-Kiss for Six, by Saratoga Six, bounced in by a length at 20-1 under Mike Smith, giving Harris his first Grade I victory in 34 years in the game.

“I’ve run second and third in big races but I never thought she’d be my first Grade I winner,” Harris said.

Harris has assured everyone he knows that he will be present for Alphabet Kisses’ next race—the $500,000, 1 1/16-mile Sunshine Millions Distaff at Santa Anita on Jan. 29.

“It’s nice that she now has a Grade I win under her belt,” Harris pointed out. “We had thought of running her in a Cal-bred race instead of the La Brea. Now I’m obviously glad we didn’t.”

The manner by which Harris came to breed and own Alphabet Kisses was serendipitous.
Along with Sen. Ken Maddy and CTBA board member Don Valpredo, he was at the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association awards dinner at Frank Stronach’s Adena Springs Farm in Versailles, Ky., on Sept. 10, 1999.

Harris was honored as the leading breeder in California and Maddy, who died a few months later after a long illness, received TOBA’s Industry Service Award for contributions to racing.

The dinner program included an auction of stallion seasons to benefit the Grayson/Jockey Club Foundation. Harris paid $20,000 for a season to Stronach’s Alphabet Soup, the gray winner of the 1996 Breeders’ Cup Classic, and the first year the race was run for $4 million.
Two months later, at the November Keeneland Sale, Harris bought Kiss for Six in foal to French Deputy.

Saratoga Six, Kiss for Six’s sire, was one of the top 2-year-olds of 1984, winning all four of his races before an injury that required major surgery ended his career.

“He’s never been much of a sire,” Harris said of Saratoga Six, now 23 years old. “You can breed to him for $3,000. But he’s starting to have an impact as a broodmare sire.”

After buying Kiss for Six, Harris left her in Kentucky for her rendezvous with Alphabet Soup. The mare lost her French Deputy foal, but Alphabet Kisses was the result of her subsequent breeding to Alphabet Soup.

Trained by Marty Jones at Hollywood Park, Alphabet Kisses has won five of her nine starts, all in 2004. Her $150,000 share of the La Brea purse lifted her bankroll to $326,910. She has finished out of the money only once, running ninth to Our Mango in the Cal Cup Distaff on Oct. 16.
--Larry Bortstein