Cal-bred News

El Don Seeks Winning Colors

ARCADIA, Calif. (Jan. 25, 2007) -- In an attempt to gain an advantage over heavily favored Lava Man in the $500,000 Sunshine Millions Turf on Santa Anita Park on Saturday, the owners and breeders of El Don plan an equipment change.

Not for the horse. For jockey Alex Solis.

John Harris and Don Valpredo will have Solis wear Valpredo’s shocking pink and chartreuse colors when he rides El Don into combat for the 1 1/8-mile race.

The last time El Don carried Valpredo’s colors, he won the California Dreamin’ Handicap for California-breds at Del Mar on Aug. 4.

“They should move him up two lengths,” Valpredo says. “The only problem with that is he may need to move up five lengths to beat Lava Man.”

The $3.6 million Sunshine Millions, which consists of eight races for California- and Florida-breds, four races each at Santa Anita and Gulfstream Park, is being contested for the fifth time.

Lava Man who, like El Don, is a 6-year-old California-bred gelding, seems to tower over the Sunshine Millions Turf field. His task in winning his second Sunshine Millions event—he captured the $1 million Classic last year--may have been made even simpler when Revved Up, a 9-year-old Florida-bred gelding who figured as the second betting choice in the race, didn’t board the plane going west.

“I think we’re running for second or third money, anyway,” says Harris, Valpredo’s partner in El Don. “Our horse doesn’t run many bad races, but he isn’t a great horse either. He’s your basic hard-knocking gelding.”

By Cee’s Tizzy out of the Pretense mare Timed Perfectly, El Don, a bay, has won seven of his 25 races, with three seconds and three thirds en route to $455,441 in career earnings. Four of his victories and nearly half his bankroll have come on grass, over which he has raced exclusively since his last try on the main track in July, 2005, at Hollywood Park.

He won two of his seven races in 2006, beginning the year with a triumph in open company in Bay Meadows’ San Matean Handicap. In his only previous race on grass at Santa Anita, he was unplaced as the favorite in the 2005 Cal Cup Mile.

El Don is the most successful offspring of his dam, Timed Perfectly, who had him when she was 18 years old. Now 24, she was retired from breeding after dropping It’s Perfectly Clear, a filly by High Brite, in 2003. But she still serves Harris Farms Inc. as a nursemare.

Her most successful foal before El Don was the Dimaggio gelding Perfect Timing, a foal of 1990 who won 14 of his 57 starts, placed in two stakes and earned $147,778. Formerly a stable pony at the track for Marty Jones, who trains El Don, Perfect Timing now handles the same job at Harris Farms’ 7/8ths-mile facility in Coalinga, Calif.

Pretense, the sire of Timed Perfectly, won the 1968 Bing Crosby Handicap at Del Mar in record time of 1:07.80, “One of the greatest performances I ever saw,” Valpredo says.

In Prime Time, Timed Perfectly’s dam, also was the dam of Nopro Blema, a daughter of Dimaggio who later produced the outstanding filly Soviet Problem, runner-up in the 1994 Breeders’ Cup Sprint.
“It’s been a good family for us all these years,” Harris says.

El Don, who occasionally carries Valpredo’s colors, always carries his name; the gelding is named for him. This is a good thing when he runs well.

“Then his name is El Don,” Valpredo says. “If he doesn’t run well, his name is Eldon.”
-- Larry Bortstein