“I was worried if I had him fit enough, I really was,” trainer Peter Miller said. “But he's a champion and he's got that heart of a champion. I'm just glad I had him fit enough. Just enough.”

Mo Forza was owned by the late Barry Abrams, a highly-respected trainer/owner/breeder on the Southern California circuit for many years who died last October after a 15-year battle with cancer.

“I've never had a horse that brought so much emotion to me,” Miller said. “Just seeing him in the barn, I think of Barry. The horse is special, big time.”

Smooth Like Strait was the first of two runner-up efforts for trainees of Mike McCarthy, who sent out stable newcomer Master Piece in the Del Mar Handicap.

“They both came back well and we're happy with the efforts,” McCarthy said.

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“He's doing really well,” said Miller, who enjoys singular success utilizing serene surroundings at the Bonsall training facility San Luis Rey Downs in California's San Diego County. “He looks fantastic and we'll probably bring him back in another 60 days or so.”

Mo Forza, a 5-year-old son of Uncle Mo, had won six of his last seven starts including the G2 City of Hope Mile on grass at Santa Anita last Oct. 3 and Del Mar's G1 Hollywood Derby on Nov. 30, 2019.

He was bred in Kentucky by the late Barry Abrams, who also owned a share of the bay with Onofrio Pecoraro. He races as OG Boss; Abrams campaigned as Bardy Farm.

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“If all goes well, we'll run in the Breeders' Cup next year at Del Mar,” the trainer said.

“What happened is just bad timing. I think he's the best turf miler in the world and I'm disappointed he won't be able to prove it this year.”

Mo Forza was owned in part by the estate of former trainer Barry Abrams, who died on Oct. 9 after a 15-year battle with cancer.

Abrams, who campaigned as Bardy Farm, also bred Mo Forza.

“This horse kept Barry going,” Miller said. “It gave him something to look forward to.

“It meant a lot to Barry and meant a lot to me, so we were crossing our fingers and hoping he could 'Win One for The Gipper.'”

A 4-year-old Uncle Mo colt also owned by part by Onofrio Pecoraro who races as OG Boss, Mo Forza had won six of his last seven races including the G1 Hollywood Derby last Nov. 30 and the G2 City of Hope Mile at Santa Anita on Oct. 3, his most recent outing.

The Kentucky-bred bay has a 6-3-1 record from 12 starts with earnings of $734,460.

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“If all goes well, we’ll run in the Breeders’ Cup next year at Del Mar,” the trainer said. “What happened is just bad timing. I think he’s the best turf miler in the world and I’m disappointed he won’t be able to prove it this year.”

Mo Forza is co-owned by Onofrio Pecoraro, who races as OG Boss, and by the estate of former trainer Barry Abrams, who died Oct. 9 after a 15-year battle with cancer. Abrams, who campaigned as Bardy Farm, also bred Mo Forza.

“This horse kept Barry going,” Miller said. “It gave him something to look forward to. It meant a lot to Barry and meant a lot to me, so we were crossing our fingers and hoping he could ‘Win One for The Gipper.'”

A four-year-old, who has a 6-3-1 record from 12 starts with earnings of $734,460, won six of his last seven races, including last fall’s GI Hollywood Derby and the Oct. 3 GII City of Hope Mile at Santa Anita in his most recent outing.

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The popular former trainer passed away on Oct. 9 at 66 after a courageous 15-year battle with cancer, never showing a hint of self-pity.

Amid the emotion, Santa Anita horn blower Jay Cohen, in traditional fox hunt regalia, gave Abrams his final call to the post.

Huey Barnes, an 87-year-old African American who came to California to work as an exercise rider for Charlie Whittingham in the 1950s when racial discrimination was still a sty in America's eye, with public restrooms and drinking fountains for “Colored Only,” delivered an impromptu and moving eulogy.

Barnes is still going strong today working at Santa Anita as an assistant starter.

Abrams was born of Jewish ancestry in Russia where his father, Lev, earned his living as a butcher, but a darker skin pigment and a disparate faith didn't prevent Huey and Barry from becoming fast friends, each an ardent fan of the Los Angeles Lakers.

Their relationship was based on what matters most: character, values, loyalty, honesty, trust and respect, not skin color and religion.

In his final years when it was no longer safe for Barry to drive, Barnes picked him up at home and drove them to Laker games.

“When they were over Barry would always find some hole-in-the-wall spot to eat, one I never heard of, and I been out here for a long time,” Barnes said.

“Then next game he'd take me to another spot and I'd ask him, 'Where do you keep finding these places?' He loved horses, the Lakers and food, and it made him feel good when he could share them with me.

“I loved that man.”

Common interests and an absence of prejudice nurtured their uncharacteristic and unyielding bonding of more than four decades, this black man from Brooklyn and this white man from Russia.

Race was never an issue.

The word only came up when Barry had a horse running in one.

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Abrams, best known as a trainer but also a successful breeder and owner, succumbed to throat cancer at the age of 66 after a long battle.

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Barry Abrams died peacefully Friday night at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Arcadia, Calif., after he was taken off a ventilator following a recent fall at home that injured his back. He was 66. Services are pending.

Abrams had courageously battled throat cancer for 15 years. A bear of a man at 6-4, 315 pounds before he was stricken, Abrams bared his soul in a story I authored about his ordeal that appeared in the October-November 2015 issue of North American Trainer Magazine, excerpts of which follow in this item.

Barry Abrams never smoked. He got cancer anyway. Side effects from the treatment over a 10-year period caused him to lose his taste buds, prevented him from swallowing (he used a feeding tube), he couldn't eat, run, go in the ocean or a swimming pool.

“I'm just functioning and happy to be alive,” he said. “I can eat cookies as long as they're liquified and made pudding-like. I can't swallow anything else because I have no salivary glands that create saliva.”

He lost half his voice box during surgeries, reducing his  speech to a whisper, but he never complained.

“Ordinarily, you talk about things like saving for the future and making plans for this and that, but facing this, you realize that there could be no future,” he said in the 2015 article.

One of Barry's dearest friends was trainer Richard Baltas, who assisted in the barn operation during Abrams' five-month recovery in 2011. “He's very kind with a good heart,” Baltas said. “Years ago, I wanted to leave Louisiana and come home to California, but I needed a job.

“Barry didn't quibble. He simply asked me, 'How much do you want to make?' and that was it. He came to my wedding on Feb. 26, 2011, when he was sick with cancer. He's done many kind and generous things for me.”

Said Abrams' wife, Dyan: “Barry is so kind and helpful. If you needed the shirt off his back, he'd give it to you. … He's one of the good ones. He's got a good heart and a good soul.”

Trainer Peter Miller was looking forward to winning the Breeders' Cup Mile with a horse Abrams owns in part, Mo Forza. “Barry and I have known each other probably 25, 30 years,” Miller said several days ago. “Barry's a great guy. Everyone loves him, and this horse really helped keep him going.”

A highly accomplished conditioner of both Standardbreds and Thoroughbreds, Barry Abrams will forever be associated with Unusual Heat, a horse he claimed for $80,000 on June 10, 1996.  The son of Nureyev would go on to become one of the greatest stallions in California racing history.

With Barry's passing, two questions will forever remain unresolved: did racing love Barry more, or did Barry love racing more?

Call it a dead-heat.

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“He really looked into the soul of a horse,” said David Abrams, Barry Abrams’s brother. “He had horses run that didn’t run for anybody else.”

Abrams had battled throat cancer for more than 15 years.

“He never once complained about what he was going through,” said trainer Richard Baltas, Abrams’s former assistant. “He helped people who were less fortunate than him and was one of the good guys at the track.”

From hard-scrabble beginnings–“One of the underdogs. The little guy with a small stable,” said David–Abrams left an indelible stamp on the sport in the Golden State. From just over 6,000 individual starts, he secured 688 victories and more than $30 million in prize money.

His top-tier prizes included Famous Digger (Quest for Fame {GB})’s win in the 1997 GI Del Mar Oaks, the 2008 GI Las Virgenes S. with Golden Doc A and the 2010 GI Hollywood Turf Club S. with Unusual Suspect–the latter two by Unusual Heat, the remarkable lynchpin stallion of the California breeding industry who Abrams also conditioned.

“He was brilliant with his claims,” said David, of his brother. “He claimed two horses from Richard Mandella. One became a Grade I winner [Famous Digger], the other one was Unusual Heat. He saw in Unusual Heat what other people didn’t–they thought he was crazy claiming a 6-year-old with potential bowed tendon. He said, ‘the horse is worth what I’m claiming him for as a sire.'”

Abrams remained a minority owner of Unusual Heat, who stood at the Harris Ranch in Coalinga, and eventually became the all-time leading sire in California through his offsprings’ earnings.

“Barry was a remarkable horseman and a real horse whisperer. He was also a master at navigating the racing office, which I think is a lost art in trainers,” said Harris Auerbach, managing partner of the Unusual Heat Syndicate.

“He taught me an awful lot about horsemanship, about gamesmanship and about life,” Auerbach added. “He was just a giving, caring, remarkable man.”

Over the years, Abrams hewed closely to the ethos, “you don’t get paid for workouts,” becoming synonymous with moderately bred horses who earned their supper on the track.

“I remember a horse called Bengal Bay, one of the first horses we were successful with. He ran it three times in nine days,” said David. “Even [trainer] Roger Stein, who Barry worked for, criticized him for doing it. The horse won by six lengths at Hollywood Park on the third trip. That horse just loved to run.”

Beyond Abrams’s chronicled deeds that are now stamped into the dust of racing posterity, many point to a largesse and generosity of spirit that encompassed all, the less fortunate and the blue collar everyman that constitute racing’s rank and file.

“Anybody could walk up to Barry and be part of the family,” said David. “At Del Mar he had an area where he sat–it was a table around which sat a bunch of guys, just the common gambler. Folks just having fun. There’s Barry with a Grade I horse, and he doesn’t go to the director’s room. He sat back down there and made sure his family was all taken care of.”

Whether it was gamblers or racetrack patrons or those he’d known for years, “Barry felt obligated to help them out when they needed it,” said Auerbach. “He would give anybody the shirt off his back–he was that kind of guy.”

Abrams’s father was a Polish holocaust survivor, his mother a Russian economist. The family emigrated to the U.S. in 1963. “We came with nothing,” said David.

If their mother had her way, Abrams would have charted a course into the less exotic realms of certified public accountants. But he caught the gambling bug early. “My mom almost had a heart attack when he quit school, laid carpet, then became a groom,” said David.

Abrams took out his training license in 1975. “When he first started, he only had I think four horses, and didn’t have a groom. He did everything himself. He lost 28 pounds that first summer he trained on his own,” said David. “He just had a passion for horse racing.”

He also had a passion for the Lakers and wasn’t shy about advertising it–the stakes-winning Lakerville, who he part-owned with the Auerbachs, would go on to earn more than $300,000 on the track.

“We asked the nurse last night to put the Lakers game on,” said David. “Ten minutes after they lost he passed away.”

“He was a fighter,” David added. “He knew. I saw him two days before and he knew. He wanted to tell everybody how much he loved them all, and how much we all meant to him.”

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Breaking alertly from the outside in a field of seven, Mo Forza rated kindly and settled into a fluid rhythm down the backside, about five lengths off pacesetting Blitzkrieg with a half mile to run.  Three-deep turning for home, he was hand ridden while lugging in a bit through the lane and won with consummate ease over multiple graded stakes winner Sharp Samurai.

“He pretty much had the same trip as he did in the Del Mar Mile (G2, Aug. 23),” said Prat.  “I think he's getting more professional, which is great.  Today he showed up again.  We can probably go further, but as of right now, he's running pretty well, so I wouldn't change anything.”

A 4 1/4-length winner of the Del Mar Mile Handicap on turf, Mo Forza was off as the 3-5 favorite and paid $3.20, $2.20 and $2.10.

“That's him,” said Ruben Alvarado, assistant to Miller.  “He relaxes early and then you saw the way he finished up.  He ran today just like he did at Del Mar.  We're very happy and we're looking forward to the Breeders' Cup.

Bred in Kentucky by former trainer Barry Abrams' Bardy Farm and owned by Bardy Farm and OG Boss, Mo Forza, who is out of the Unusual Heat mare Inflamed, notched his fifth graded stakes win and he has now won five out of his last six races with four of them over the Santa Anita turf.  With six wins from 12 overall starts, he's four for five at one mile on grass and with the winner's share of $120,000, has earnings of $734,460.

Sharp Samurai, who sat a close third behind Blitzkrieg and eventual third-place finisher Bob and Jackie, kept to his task to finish second by 1 1/4 lengths and paid $3.00 and $2.60 as the 7-2 second choice with Juan Hernandez up.

Off at 24-1 with Heriberto Figueroa, Bob and Jackie prevailed by a head over Blitzkrieg and paid $5.60 to show.

Fractions on the race were 22.58, 45.61, 1:08.76 and 1:20.53.

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The 4-year-old colt by top stallion Uncle Mo out of the Unusual Heat mare Inflamed, scored by 4 1/4 lengths under Flavien Prat in the good time of 1:33.27 for the mile and, as the 6-5 favorite, paid $4.40, $3.00 and $2.40 across the board. He is trained by Peter Miller.

This was the 34th running of the Grade 2 Del Mar Mile and it rewarded its winner with a purse of $90,000, pushing his bankroll to $614,460. The bay has now won five of his 11 starts, four of those victories coming in stakes races, including the Hollywood Derby last fall at Del Mar.

“Peter (trainer Miller) and I talked before the race and we noted that there looked like a lot of speed in the race,” said Prat. “That turned out true. He told me he took his blinkers off and he was hoping for the best. I had a good trip; my horse was relaxed. Then, when I say 'Go,' he had a really strong response.”

“That gave me goose pimples,” said Miller. “I was just hoping I had him tight enough and ready to perform. These were a good group of horses, but he's exceptional. To see this horse back in the winner's circle is really exciting. He had a tendency to get rank in his races last year and wanted to run over horses, so we thought we didn't want that problem this year so we took the blinkers off. He's been working without them and I thought that if it doesn't work out I'm going to look like an idiot, but thank goodness it worked out. We think the Breeders' Cup will definitely be the end of the year with one race in between.”

Bardy Farm is the nom du course for former trainer and breeder Barry Abrams, who raced horses for many years with great success on the Southern California circuit. He is home battling cancer these days but this horse – who Abrams also bred – had to pick his head up for sure. His partner in the colt is Onofrio Pecoraro of San Diego.

Finishing second in the feature was Kelly Brinkerhoff and Bog Grayson, Jr.'s Restrainedvengence and third was Fox Hill Farms and Siena Farm's Royal Ship.

The riding and training stars of the day were Prat and Miller, who combined to win three races on the 11-race card. Besides Mo Forza they also clicked with Querelle ($4.60) in the 2nd Race and Worthy Turk ($8.20) in the 7th. Prat is now second-leading rider at the meet with 34 wins after 19 days of racing. Miller leads the trainers' list with 18 firsts. Prat has been Del Mar's top rider on three different occasions, while Miller has been the leading conditioner seven times.

The stakes win was the 10th of the meet for rider Prat, but his first in the Del Mar Mile. He now has 54 stakes wins at Del Mar.

The stakes win was the third of the meet for trainer Miller, but his first in the Del Mar Mile. He now has 32 stakes wins at Del Mar.

Nobody could solve the Pick Six mystery on Sunday resulting in a $89,465 carryover and a $19,171 Jackpot carryover when racing resumes Friday at Del Mar starting at 2 p.m.

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