Alex Trebek also was involved in the racing game

Alex Trebek is being remembered across North America as the host of Jeopardy!, But it could be said that a racehorse really helped him span the globe.

As Trebek’s life is being recounted after he died Sunday at age 80, his lesser-known pursuits are being revisited, including the nine years he owned a farm where he bred Thoroughbreds.

“I fell in love with the property,” Trebek told the Los Angeles Times in 2003. “I didn’t have any interest in horses or racing. At the beginning we had 700 acres and not one horse.”

It did not take long for that to change. Trebek adored the land in Paso Robles, which in the late ’90s came to be known as Creston Farms. By his count there were eventually about 300 horses living there, including 40 that were his.

“He’s approaching the business the right way,” trainer Dan Hendricks told Blood-Horse in 2002. “He’s not running out and buying a bunch of yearlings or 10 2-year-olds in training or 20 broodmares. He’s breeding the right way.”

Trebek had made an exception in the spring of 1999, when he spent $130,000 to buy a 2-year-old Slew O’ Gold colt at a Barretts Equine Sale in Southern California. It took a while for him to come into his own, but Reba’s Gold would develop into Trebek’s best racehorse.

“He always does well, no matter what the company is,” Trebek said after a 2002 victory at Hollywood Park. “If he can do the same thing for us in Japan I’ll be very happy.”

That was late in the 5-year-old season for Reba’s Gold, twice a handicap winner but still 0-for-6 in graded stakes — and never a starter in a Grade 1 race. That did not stop Trebek and Hendricks from taking their shot just two weeks after that Hollywood Park win with a trip to the Japan Cup Dirt (G1).

Although commitments to “Jeopardy!” and other TV projects kept him from getting to the racetrack as often as he might have wanted, Trebek did make the trip to Nakayama that fall.

Reba’s Gold pressed the pace early in the 1 1/8 miles and was as close as fourth at the start of the final turn. But there was nothing left when jockey David Flores asked for more, and Reba’s Gold finished ninth.

“That was disappointing,” Trebek told reporters. “David said the horse was never handling the track. It was too deep.”

That was not the end for Reba’s Gold. He bounced back after a wintertime layoff, showed up at Bay Meadows in Northern California and, with jockey Chance Rollins riding, won by eight lengths in the 2003 Seabiscuit Handicap (G3).

As it turned out, Trebek missed it.

“I enjoy visiting the farm more than I enjoy going to the races,” Trebek told the Los Angeles Times.

That turned out to be the last win for Reba’s Gold. He raced seven more times in California before he got hurt in 2004. After earning $717,422 he was retired to Trebek’s farm to begin a stallion career.

Within a year, Trebek would sell his land for a reported $10 million to investors who intended to turn it into a housing development. All these years later it still looks like a farm, although it is often rented out for scenic weddings.

Reba’s Gold would end up in New Mexico, where he died in 2008. That was the same year that Bay Meadows hosted its final race. Apartments are mushrooming where it once stood. Hollywood Park closed nearly seven years ago, replaced by the new home of the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers.

Barretts Equine Sales went away two years ago. Even the Japan Cup Dirt is no more, its name having been changed to the Champions Cup.

A head injury in a racing spill ended Rollins’s riding career 14 years ago. Flores switched from jockey to trainer in the last two years. Hendricks decided to pause his training career a little more than a year ago.

And now Trebek is gone, having lost a very public 20-month battle with pancreatic cancer. Videos of his younger days in Canada as the host of Video Hop and clips of his first U.S. game show, The Wizard of Odds, will be watched again and again on YouTube. His first-run episodes of Jeopardy! will air until Christmas.

All the while there will be a proud thought or two that Trebek became one with racing fans. And more so with horse lovers.

“The horses are such beautiful animals,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “It’s relaxing. It’s like getting back to nature. Everything just slows down and is much calmer.”