Workout for Leading Spirit

This notice is to inform you that one or more of your horses has worked out.
Leading Spirit
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Date: June 30, 2007
Track: LOS ALAMITOS
Distance: Three Hundred And Fifty Yards
Time: 17:50 Handily
Track Condition: Fast
Surface: Dirt
Rank: 1/7

Glad to see he is back!!!!!!!

Me too. I thought since we hadn't heard anything in quite a while that he had been retired. After such a long rest, I'm hoping he's in fine fettle and ready to take on all comers.

The guys on TVG Saturday night said he's with Paul Jones and everyone is blown away by his workout time. Apparently it's the fastest on record at Los Al.

COURTESY OF LOS ALAMITOS AND STALLIONESEARCH.COM



Champion Leading Spirit winning the Ruidoso
Futurity(G1) as a two-year-old.
Photo by Robert Edwards/Southwest Racing News


Leading Spirit Looks Super In 350-Yard Gate Drill



LOS ALAMITOS RACE COURSE, CYPRESS, CA— Barry Thompson and Dan and Jolene Urschel's Leading Spirit, the AQHA champion 2-year-old gelding in 2005, worked 350 yards from the gate in a brilliant time of :17.50 Saturday morning at Los Alamitos. The 4-year-old has not raced since taking part in an allowance event on June 11, 2006.
"That was the fastest work I've ever seen here from the gate," said Paul Jones, the trainer of Leading Spirit at Los Alamitos. "I've been around Los Alamitos a very long time and I've seen a lot of works. I can't remember another horse with a faster work from the gate at 350. He was working by himself and we didn't push him either. That makes this work even more impressive."

Ed Burgart, the track announcer and morning line maker at Los Alamitos since the early 1980s, was equally impressed with Leading Spirit's morning performance.

"That's the fastest 350 gate work that I can remember here," Burgart added.

Jones said that the ultimate goal for Leading Spirit is to see him earn a berth to this year's $1 million Champion of Champions, a race that was won by his sire Special Leader in his world championship year in 1991.

"We're going to take the necessary steps to get Leading Spirit in the Champion of Champions," he said. "We're aiming for the Go Man Go Handicap, Los Alamitos Invitational Championship and if we have to the Z. Wayne Griffin Directors' Trials."

The Go Man Go does not have a direct berth to the Champion of Champions, however, if a horse earns multiple berths, one of those berths would revert to the Go Man Go. The Los Alamitos Invitational Championship does offer a guaranteed berth to the $1 million December 15 event; while the Z. Wayne Griffin is guarantee to have at least one berth available to the Champion of Champions.

Leading Spirit became a household name in Quarter Horse racing in 2005 after winning three Grade 1 futurities and seven consecutive races. His Grade 1 victories came in the West Texas Futurity, Ruidoso Futurity and Rainbow Futurity. Thompson, a former chancellor of Texas A&M University, bred the gelding out of his homebred broodmare, Sandras Task. Leading Spirit has won seven of 10 starts while earning $698,754 in his career.

Leading Spirit arrived in California several months ago and was stabled at the famous Vessels Stallion Farm. "He was at Vessels for a couple of months and we started training him out there," Jones said. "We've been taking our time with him. He is coming off a surgery performed by Dr. Chris Ray in Texas. I've been very pleased with the way he's been training and very impressed with the horse from day one."

Courtesy of www.losalamitos.com