Betting angle: Quarter-horse trainer picks spots at Santa Anita

Arcadia, Calif.

Here’s a betting angle for use once in a blue moon. When a top quarter-horse trainer who rarely races Thoroughbreds at major tracks suddenly shows up with a long shot, it’s time to pay attention.

A case in point came Friday, when Paul Jones, not only a top trainer but a legend in the quarter-horse game, sprung a surprise with Scatchmejamin in the third race at Santa Anita.

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Making the third start of her career off a five-plus month layoff, Scatchmejamin rocketed out of post 7 under jockey H.R. Lopez, opening a two-length lead on six rivals in the initial strides and never looking back in the 5 1/2-furlong, maiden special-weight race for California-bred or -sired 3-year-old fillies.

Anyone who remembered Jones’s name from the equine dragster circuit – and acted on what at the time could really only be described as a hunch play – was amply rewarded with a $40.40 payoff on a $2 win bet.

Jones said afterward that various minor, physical ailments as a 2-year-old and “little obstacles” this year kept Scatchmejamin away from the races after she finished eighth in her debut in a five-furlong turf race at Del Mar in August and ran second in a mixed Thoroughbred and quarter-horse dash at Los Alamitos the following month.

But he said he remained confident that the daughter of the obscure stallion Power Jam, now standing in Oklahoma, would be competitive on the A circuit in her return.

“She kind of proved to us that she was the horse we thought she was, so it was kind of nice,” he told Horse Racing Nation.

Jones, 57, is best known for his work with quarter horses. He is the winningest trainer in the history of the sport both by wins, 4,489 through Monday, and earnings, nearly $90 million. But he has been racing Thoroughbreds since 1993.

He has done well with them, too, winning with more than 20 percent of his 559 previous starters. But those victories occurred at Los Alamitos, where Jones’s quarter-horse operation is based, or other mixed-breed tracks such as Ruidoso Downs and Sunland Park in New Mexico.

On the A-level tracks in Southern California – Del Mar, long-gone Hollywood Park and Santa Anita – Jones was 0-for-22 with Thoroughbreds with three seconds and three thirds heading into Friday’s race.

Most of those losses occurred early in Jones’s training career, when he was figuring out where his relatively few Thoroughbred runners might fit in the Southern California horsescape.

“They weren’t quite a good enough,” he said of those early entrants. “Kind of a hope and a dream.”

But in recent years Jones has been more selective in pitting his horses against the tougher competition across town or down Interstate 5 with only four starters in the last 10 years.

Now Scatchmejamin has him dreaming again.

“This is probably the first nice Thoroughbred I’ve ever really had,” he said of the filly, whom he bred and co-owns with partner Ricky Overly.

Jones takes extra satisfaction in the fact Scatchmejamin was the first Thoroughbred he has ever bred. She was an unlikely pairing of Power Jam, who for a time owned the track records for 5 1/2 furlongs at both Del Mar and Santa Anita, and the Scat Daddy mare Scatchmeifyoucan, both of whom he purchased to cross-breed with quarter horses.

“The mare had a lot of speed, and we wanted to cross her with quarter horses. We did and we got a couple babies, and they were just decent horses. Nothing special,” he said. “We acquired Power Jam to bring to quarter horses, too, and he’s crossing pretty well with them. So since I had the interest in Power Jam, and we had this mare, I said, ‘Well, let’s just breed her to Power Jam,’ and we did, and this is the filly.”

Jones said he would like to get more involved in Thoroughbred racing, following in the footsteps of quarter-horse predecessors such as D. Wayne Lukas and Bob Baffert, but his current clientele isn’t geared toward the sport.

“You know a trainer’s only as good as his horses,” he said. “I think I’d have no problem training Thoroughbreds, but I’d have to have the right client who had some good horses to give me the opportunity. Same thing when Baffert and Lukas went over there, they had the right clients to put good horses in their barns to give them opportunities to excel.”

In the meantime, Jones is looking forward to running Scatchmejamin again, ideally in an allowance sprint for non-winners of two for California-breds.

“Both her mother and her dad were pretty good sprinters, so I’m not looking to stretch her out at this point,” he said.