How A Golden Touch Introduced Best of Pals

He stood by the elevator, at the base of the grandstand at Hollywood Park, and waited. Passing friends asked him what the hell he was doing, hanging around for hours in a suit, instead of the usual jeans and polo shirt. Next day, Sunday, he was back in position; and again the following weekend, and every weekend afterwards, until most people would have long abandoned the siege. Until, at last, the elevator opened and there he was: John C. Mabee.

“Mr. Mabee, my name is Randy Lowe,” he said. “You don't know me, but could I invest this in your company?”

Mabee opened the envelope and found a check for $100,000. Still plenty of money today, and this was 1986. Mabee looked at Lowe.

“Is this real?” he asked. “Where did this come from?”

So Lowe told him. He had always played the Pick 6. It was the only bet, he felt, that might change your life if you could actually hit one time. A few weeks previously, he had gone to Santa Anita with $120 in his pocket. It was as much as he could scrape together, as an insurance agent wearily accustomed to doors closing on his pitch. He staked $96 on his Pick 6. Add the price of his seat, something to eat, there wouldn't be much left. He was 29 years old, struggling to pay his bills, going nowhere.

Almost everybody was out after the first leg, a 35-to-one blowout. A professional gambler heard that Lowe was still in, asked to see the remaining lines, and offered $10,000 for his ticket. Lowe held his nerve and, though three of the next four legs were also won by outsiders, was still clinging to a live bet come the final leg. He had four shots.

It wasn't a typical Santa Anita day at all, and he peered down the track into a cold fog. “I was sitting there all by myself, nervous as nervous could be,” Lowe recalls. “It was a six-furlong sprint. As soon as the race started, I was yelling. Turning in, there were five horses across the track, and only one I didn't have. I remember looking up and saying, 'Please God, please don't let that horse beat me.' We ended up running one, two, three, four.”

The tension didn't end there, though. How many others could possibly be left standing? This really could change his life. Then the voice of track announcer Trevor Denman.

“Ladies and gentlemen, one ticket wins the Pick 6 today.”

Lowe rushed downstairs to the phone booth, which had to be unlocked by request, and called home.

His father could hear Lowe panting. “What's wrong?”

“I just won the Pick 6.”

“Well, what did it pay?”

“$156,000.”

“What!?”

“I don't know what to do. Do I take it in cash or what?”

After the IRS took their share, Lowe asked for $100,000 as a check and the rest in bills. For a couple of months, he carried that check around with him. He'd take it out and stare at it, asked banks about interest rates. Then he heard that Mabee, doyen of Californian racing, was starting up an insurance division. So Lowe took up his post by the elevator and waited.

Mabee heard him out, shook his head, and gave Lowe his check.

“I don't have partners,” he said.

But then he added that if Lowe believed in him, to quite that extent, then he should make an appointment at his head office in San Diego and they could see whether there might be a vacancy for him somewhere.

A week later Lowe drove down the coast, checked into a hotel and presented himself at Mabee's office.

“And where does he take me for this interview?” he says, grinning. “Del Mar racetrack.”

Mabee had a couple of runners on the card. The first would win, he declared, proposing a $1,000 exacta with the three horse.

“Okay,” Lowe said. “But you're going to lose your money. The one is going to finish second.”

And that's just how it played out. Next race, Mabee was betting the four horse.

“Again, you're going to lose your money,” Lowe said. “The nine will win.”

Sure enough, Lowe was right again. Long story short, he put Mabee on six consecutive winners and a couple of exactas into the bargain. Mabee looked at the young man in bewilderment.     “If you can sell insurance as well as you pick racehorses,” he said, “we can go very far.”

Before long, Lowe was getting calls from his workaholic boss at 5 a.m. asking for counsel not just in handicapping but in placing his horses. Gradually he became a fixture in Mabee's entourage. At the time, remember, his boss was on the board of the Breeders' Cup, chairman at Del Mar, and building up the Big Bear Markets grocery chain.

“John was a very honest, stand-up kind of guy,” Lowe recalls. “He wasn't the kind anyone could push around, but he was very fair. He demanded that things be done in the right way. He used to tell me that meetings were for people who like to waste time. If you had an idea, you should just go ahead and do it.

“And it was a friendship that really blossomed. I just couldn't believe that a man of his importance and stature would take an interest in somebody who really didn't have much of anything. A lot of the times, I couldn't afford where they were staying. So, I'd try to find a cheaper hotel and John would say, 'Nonsense!' And he'd get me a room. He made me feel like part of the family. And, you know, that rubbed some people the wrong way… I mean, I'm a Chinese guy. I used to stand in the back of pictures. But John would say, 'What you doing back there? You come down here and stand right near me.'”

Before long, anyone seeking insurance from Mabee's company in Los Angeles was being referred to Randall E. Lowe. He would be taken into even the biggest meetings: with Bob Lewis, or Saudi princes. Mabee's former partner in the Los Angeles Chargers, Barron Hilton, kept calling him Mr. Lowe. “No, sir,” he would say. “Please, just 'Randy'!”

Lowe's first venture into racehorse ownership had been, let's say, enterprising. Having identified a potential claim, he approached his uncle: “I got two-thirds of what I need, can you loan me the rest?” Then he went to his father, and said: “Dad, I got two-thirds of the money, can you lend me the rest?” Finally, he went to his mother–his parents had divorced–and you know what he said. That horse won a couple of races, and Lowe did even better with one claimed from Mabee himself, winning seven in a row. And meanwhile he has honed that freakish acuity as a handicapper, winning the Pick 6 201 times since that fateful day in 1986.

Obviously, we can't expect Lowe to share the secret. “But I have been handicapping ever since I was seven years old,” he says. “My dad used to stare at the Racing Form, spread on the dining room table, and I'd look from the other side and ask questions. He would tell me what he knew, my uncle would tell me what he knew, my cousin the same. And I started reading books and gradually put the whole thing together, my own formula.”

Soon after Lowe entered Mabee's life, so did Best Pal–the best horse ever raced by his Golden Eagle Farm, runner-up in the Kentucky Derby and winner of such iconic West Coast prizes as the Hollywood Gold Cup and Santa Anita Handicap. And fate decreed that many years later Lowe would honor his mentor by naming a horse for a combination of the stable (Golden) and its champion (Pal).

This chapter of Lowe's remarkable story traces to a Barretts sale in the fall of 2005. Mabee had died three years earlier, and Lowe had just broken up with a girlfriend. Seated today alongside his wife Brenda, he laughs at the memory. “You can print this if you want,” he says. “I said, 'The heck with these women, I'm just going to own racehorses instead!' And that's why I went to the auction.”

By that stage, having done so himself, Lowe had resolved to move his horses up in the world. There had been good claims, bad claims, plenty in between. But he figured that if ever he was going to find a Best Pal, he would have to change tack. So at the Pomona auction he bought a $28,000 weanling filly by Mutakddim (a son of Seeking The Gold who had raced in Europe) from the estate of Leon Rasmussen, the dosage theorist.

Lowe named her Sumthingtottalkabt and she won five for Wally Dollase, just falling short at stakes level but often melting the clock, both mornings and afternoons. Lowe decided she had enough speed to try his hand at breeding, and paired her with Midshipman.

The result was Lady Shipman, who missed by a neck in the GI Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint of 2015, but racked up 11 stakes and over $900,000. Her very first foal, by Uncle Mo, is Golden Pal, now limbering up for a Breeders' Cup treble after brilliantly avenging his dam's defeat in the equivalent race last year, having already won the GII Juvenile Turf Sprint in 2020. And, throughout, it has almost felt as though somebody up there is taking a benign interest.

Lady Shipman herself, for instance, fell well short of her reserve in a 2-year-old sale. She had worked nine-and-four, no medication and no whip, and Lowe wanted $210,000. She was led out at just $35,000. In turn, moreover, Lowe thought so much of Golden Pal as a yearling that he raised the bar higher yet at the September Sale. This time, however, bidding stalled at $325,000.

With Lady Shipman, people had more or less mocked him to his face. “You don't have any money,” they said. “And yet you're sitting there holding out for what you think is 'fair'!”

“Well, I didn't want people to take advantage of me,” he recalls with a shrug. “So I didn't sell her. And with Golden Pal, I told all these different trainers what the horse would be. And nobody believed me.”

The unchecked box against the colt had been sesamoiditis, but Coolmore remained interested. Lowe was so confident that he gave them 60 days to see how the horse came along. After what he recalls with a grin as “59 days and 23 hours”, the colt was returned. Okay, no problem, Lowe would send him to Wesley Ward. He had seen how the trainer adored the colt at the sale, but couldn't find a buyer.

Soon Golden Pal was showing so much speed that Lowe found himself turning down multiples of his sale reserve until, after that first Breeders' Cup, yielding to a renewed offer from a Coolmore partnership.

Now Lowe is once again showing his faith in Lady Shipman, her Omaha Beach colt another RNA in the same ring last week at $385,000. Lowe is undaunted. Eventually, people have always had to come round. “This was my fourth time trying to sell a horse,” he says. “And this time I didn't even try to talk anybody into buying him. But I'm telling you now: this horse is very, very fast. I'll just race him myself and I'll show everybody. I'll win the Breeders' Cup with him, too!”

Despite producing a champion at the first attempt, Lady Shipman has certainly charted the full spectrum of this business, having meanwhile lost both her next two foals. But Lowe is ecstatic with Golden Pal's weanling full-sister, Luvwhatyoudo; while she's now in foal to Essential Quality.

Whatever happens from here, it has already been a remarkable odyssey. When Golden Pal won his first Breeders' Cup in the silks of Ranlo Investments LLC, few realized that this was one guy with one horse. Sure, Lowe has had plenty of other horses over the past 38 years; and right now, indeed, has an interest in five. But he still watches the big names spending the big money, and wonders how many of them will ever find a horse this fast.

He hopes that the friends who bought Golden Pal will prioritize a third Breeders' Cup, but understands they have vast experience and a corresponding agenda. If they want to raise the bar by trying him on dirt–albeit the plan is apparently the GII Woodford S., on grass, on October 8–then he wishes them all possible luck.

After all, this is a man who got through college living off 50-cent enchiladas, twice a day, requesting extra chips and a glass of water. Somehow, from $20 a week, he needed to salvage something to take to the windows after getting into the racetrack for free before the last race.

“When Lady Shipman ran at the Breeders' Cup, we were in front one step before the wire and then her head came back,” he recalls. “One more half-step, we win the race. And then I probably would have sold her, and we wouldn't have had Golden Pal. Now all these different people are telling me to sell her. But every time I've ever been to see her, at all those different racetracks and now on the farm, she has come up and put her head on my shoulder, like she wants a hug. Every single time. And looks for her peppermints. So it would be very hard to sell. Sometimes there's more to life than just making money.

“It's impossible, what's happened. For a person who used to stand there at Hollywood Park, begging people as they're leaving the track, 'Excuse me, sir, could I have your Racing Form, your program?' It's taken a long time. It's almost like life is played like some kids' board game. You go this way, you go that way. All I know is that when I hoisted that Breeders' Cup trophy up in the air, I was thanking John Mabee.”

Lowe remembers seeing an old movie as a boy. About kids his own age: one was selling newspapers, one was shining shoes, that kind of thing. And they pooled their few cents and befriended a racetracker who would place their wagers. Every time, they lost. But then they won the big pool. Their friend got so excited that he had a heart attack, dropped to the floor.

“The kids are waiting for him outside,” Lowe recalls. “His car is still there. But he never comes out. And I always think that watching that movie, growing up, gave me inspiration. Because my motto has always been that if you believe in anything enough, and you want it bad enough, it will happen. You might not do it today. You might not do it tomorrow. But if you believe to the day you die, it will happen.”

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Hop, Skip, And A Jump: Going To Vegas Brings Hundreds To World Championships

When Richard Baltas-trained Going to Vegas won the Grade 2, $200,000 John C. Mabee Stakes on Sept. 4, it was estimated that around 250 people – owners or friends of owners of the three partnership groups involved with the 4-year-old daughter of Goldencents – wedged into the winner's circle for the post-race picture and trophy ceremony.

It's easy to imagine what the scene might be if Going to Vegas would prevail in Saturday's $2 million Maker's Mark Filly & Mare Turf.

Oh, the humanity!

No! The humanity won't be quite as numerous, said Bing Bush, founder and manager of Abbondanza Racing, one of the three partnership organizations involved.

“That was a bit of a concern,” Bush conceded. “But you can't get in the winner's circle unless you have a lanyard and I think we have 30 lanyards apiece for each of the three groups. So it'll be down from 200 or so to 90.”

The John C. Mabee, at 1 1/8 miles on the Jimmy Durante Turf Course, turned out to be the middle leg, albeit an important one, on Going to Vegas' hop, step and jump into participation in racing's championship weekend.

Hop: The former $50,000 claimer won an allowance over the Mabee course on July 16, opening day of the summer meeting.

Step: The victory, by 2 ¼ lengths over Dogtag in the Mabee, which brought with it a $120,000 share of the purse, but was not a be-all for the connections. Going to Vegas was not made eligible as a foal for the Breeders' Cup and the daunting prospect of having to pay a six-figure supplemental entry fee remained.

Jump: The Grade 1, 1 ¼-mile Rodeo Drive on Oct. 2 at Santa Anita was a “Win & You're In” fees paid qualifier for the Filly & Mare Turf, and Going to Vegas went wire-to-wire under Umberto Rispoli, holding off Luck by a head.

So, on Sunday morning, Bush and some friends watched from the two-story temporary structure along the stretch as Going to Vegas went four furlongs in :49.20 in her final work for Saturday's race.

“Sometimes at the end of a work she tends to lug in a little bit, but today she didn't,” Bush said. “She did it very easily and galloped out very nicely, so we couldn't be happier.”

And on Monday, Bush and friends gathered in the Del Mar paddock for the post position draw for all 14 Breeders' Cup races to see Going to Vegas get the No. 1 post and be assigned morning line odds of 12-1.

“Under normal circumstances, I would be disappointed with the No. 1,” Bush said. “But under these circumstances, I think it's all right. She'll be able to use her natural speed to get a good position – she doesn't have to have the lead, but she might — and go from there.”

Bush resides in the complex of white houses on the hillside north of and overlooking the track just across Via de la Valle.

“I can walk here,” he points out.

If Going to Vegas pulls off an upset on Saturday, Bush – and 90 lanyard-wearers in the filly's camp – will be walking on air to the winner's circle. It won't be like the John C. Mabee. But they won't mind.

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Hall of Fame Trainer Gary Jones Passes Away at 76

Trainer Gary Jones, who was inducted into the United States Racing Hall of Fame in 2014, passed away Sunday at his home in Del Mar, California. His son, trainer Marty Jones, said his father had been in hospice care and died of natural causes. He was 76.

“He was an amazing person, first and foremost,” his son said. “For me, that’s the most important thing. On top of that, he was a great horse trainer.”

Gary Jones was the son of longtime California-based trainer Farrell Jones and took over his father’s stable upon his retirement in 1975. He picked right up where his father left off, winning with the first horse he ever saddled, King Wako, on Dec. 26, 1975 at Santa Anita, and quickly established himself as one of the leading trainers in Southern California. In 1976, he had 47 winners at the Santa Anita meet, breaking the record that had been set by his father. It was the first of 15 meet titles he would win.

Over the years, Jones continued to pile up stakes wins, many of them with fellow Hall of Famer Chris McCarron aboard.

“Gary was family,” McCarron said. “He was the first major trainer in Southern California to give me a real shot. I developed a relationship more quickly with Gary than any other trainer out there and I will be forever grateful for his support. I was tickled to death when he got inducted into the Hall of Fame years ago. I am so glad it happened before he passed away. As the years went on, we became incredibly close and our families got very close. I am very saddened by this loss.”

Though Jones won stakes with numerous horses, he will be best remembered for two–Turkoman and Best Pal.

Turkoman enjoyed his best season in 1986, when he was named Champion Older Male. He won the GI Widener H., the GII Oaklawn H., the GI Marlboro Cup H. and was second in both the GI Jockey Club Gold Cup and the GI Breeders’ Cup Classic.

“Turkoman did not care about running,” Jones told the Del Mar Times in 2014. “I had to breeze him an eighth of a mile the morning of a race to let him know he was going to run.”

After starting his career for Ian Jory, Best Pal was turned over to Jones in 1991, midway through his 3-year-old season. After a win in the GII Swaps S., Best Pal, owned by John C. Mabee, won the inaugural running of the Pacific Classic.

“It was a big deal at the time,” Jones said in 2014. “The race was Mr. Mabee’s dream. There was quite a bit of pressure.”

“Best Pal had a limited amount of ability, but he was all desire. He never wanted to lose–a classy son of a gun. And he was a character,” Jones added.

Jones also trained the outstanding fillies Kostroma (Ire), who won the GI Beverly D. S., the GI Yellow Ribbon Invitational S. and the GI Santa Barbara H., and Lakeway, a daughter of Seattle Slew who won four Grade I races. Jones won his first $1-million race when capturing the 1983 GI Hollywood Futurity with Fali Time.

Though just 52 at the time, Jones retired in 1996 after suffering from heart problems.

“He had some heart conditions he was dealing with at the time and made that decision along with my mom,” Marty Jones said. “He felt like it was time to turn the page.”

The younger Jones took over his father’s stable after he retired.

It was not until 18 years later that Jones made the Hall of Fame.

“I was flabbergasted when they told me,” he said in 2014 after learning that he was to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. “I had been passed over a few times already, and I had decided I probably wouldn’t be making it.”

Jones won 1,465 races during his career and his horses earned a total of $52,672,611. He won 102 graded stakes.

In addition to his son Marty, Jones is survived by his wife, Joan, and another son, David, who is an attorney.

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Lady Prancealot, Raymundos Secret Top Saturday’s John C. Mabee

The 63rd edition of the John C. Mabee Stakes at Del Mar Saturday has drawn a field of eight older fillies and mares headed by a pair of on-the-rise 4-year-olds in Raymundos Secret and Lady Prancealot.

The Grade II race with its $150,000 purse goes as the 10th of 11 on a card that will have an early starting time of 1 p.m.

Raymundos Secret, a Florida-bred by a British stallion named Treasure Beach, comes into the mile and one-eighth Mabee off a photo-finish tally in a one-mile allowance race at Del Mar on August 14. That was the first start by the Phil D'Amato-trained bay since October 26 of last year, so it surely should serve as a good tightener. It was also the filly's fourth win in six lifetime starts, all on the green. She races for the partnership of Sierra Racing or Sterling Stables.

Lady Prancealot, who does her running out of the barn of trainer Richard Baltas, comes into the Mabee off a series of stakes tries against some of the better grass fillies and mares on the west coast. The Irish-bred by Sir Prancealot most recently finished fourth – beaten less than two lengths despite trouble along the way – in the Grade II Yellow Ribbon at Del Mar on August 8. Last year she won the Grade III Valley View at Keeneland and the Grade I American Oaks at Santa Anita and sports a bankroll of $574,841. She's owned by McClanahan, Iavarone or Parkland Thoroughbreds.

Interestingly, though not surprisingly, the top two riders at the session – Umberto Rispoli and Flavien Prat – ride the top two fillies in the feature. Rispoli will get a leg up on Lady Prancealot, while Prat goes aboard Raymundos Secret.

Here's the full field for the headliner from the rail out with riders and morning line odds:

Amerman Racing's Catch the Eye (J.C. Diaz, Jr., 15-1); Lady Prancealot (5/2); Sondereker, Lewkowitz or Albert, et al's Don't Blame Judy (Drayden Van Dyke, 10-1); Mr. and Mrs. Larry D. Williams' Pulpit Rider (Juan Hernandez, 5-1); Little Red Feather Racing's Zee Drop (Abel Cedillo, 6-1); Jeong or Johnson's Meal Ticket (Tiago Pereira, 15-1); Hronis Racing's Quick (Jose Valdivia, Jr., 8-1), and Raymundos Secret (2-1).

Pulpit Rider comes into the Mabee off a photo-finish score in the Solana Beach Stakes for California-breds going a mile on the grass at Del Mar on August 15. The 5-year-old mare by the late Lucky Pulpit has won six races and more than $460,000 in purses.

Zee Drop, a 4-year-old chestnut by Lemon Drop Kid, steps into stakes competition for the first time. She's won three of her eight lifetime outings, including a victory on the green at Del Mar last September.

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