Milton Pineda wins first career training title at Los Alamitos

In the Los Alamitos winter Thoroughbred meet, which concluded Sunday, Milton Pineda topped the trainer standings with five victories over the six race days. That was two more than Bob Baffert, Leandro Mora and Peter Miller, who finished a joint second in the standings.

It was the first training crown for the 38-year-old Pineda, who has 41 career wins since starting his first horse in June 2019. Twenty of those wins have come this year in claiming and starter company across the Los Alamitos daytime, Los Alamitos nighttime and Santa Anita meets.

Belico Racing and Lizbeth Medina won the owners' crown with four wins over the course of the meet, two more than Les Blake, Johnny Taboada, Tricar Tables and Jesus J. Uranga. Their winners included Talkative Gal, Hillstone Martini, Big Talker and Keep Your Coil, all of whom won claiming races during the meet. The success of Belico Racing and Medina was intricately tied with Milton Pineda's success, as all four of their winners were conditioned by the leading trainer.

Pineda, Baffert and Miller had the most wins for the year at Los Alamitos. Each had 10 victories in combining the winter meet with the September (Sept. 16-25) and Los Angeles County fair (June 25-July 9) seasons.

Ramon Vazquez won the riding title, completing a sweep of the three meets. He finished the winter meet with 10 wins. This put him three wins ahead of apprentice Armando Aguilar and four past Juan Hernandez.

Vazquez won two of the four stakes at the winter meet, both with horses trained by Tim Yakteen. He upset the $200,000 Los Alamitos Futurity (G2) on Saturday with 10-1 long shot Practical Move for owners Pierre Jean Amestoy, Leslie Amestoy and Roger Beasley. He also won the Soviet Problem, a dirt mile for California-bred juvenile fillies, with George Krikorian homebred Cast Member. Cast Member, favored at 7-10 in the Soviet Problem, is now perfect in three starts.

A 38-year-old native of Puerto Rico, Vazquez finished 2022 at Los Alamitos with 35 wins across the year's three meets, 20 more than runner-up Hernandez. Kyle Frey was third with 13 victories.

Field size for the 2022 winter meet increased over last year. The average field size was 7.37 starters per race compared with 6.77 in 2021.

Daytime Thoroughbred racing will return to Los Alamitos in 2023. The first of three meets is scheduled to begin Friday, June 23, and continue through Sunday, July 9.