LOS ALAMITOS : Now There’s Plenty of Brotherly Love

When Griswold, the three-time champion distance horse, retired in early November, quarter horse racing was left looking for another 870-yard star to take his place. Brotherly might be that horse, considering his recent victory in the $64,900 Marathon Handicap.

Until November, Speedy Lunch seemed the logical choice for 1995 champion distance horse. After all, the 8-year-old gelding had won five consecutive stakes races.

But on Nov. 4, Brotherly ran at 870 yards for the first time in the Breeders Marathon Classic, and handed Speedy Lunch a stunning 1 3/4-length loss, his first defeat of the year.

Then last Friday night, Brotherly ran again at 870 yards, again defeating Speedy Lunch, who finished fourth. So although Speedy Lunch is a five-time stakes winner, Brotherly has beaten him twice in two chances, leaving the title in doubt.

Brotherly, trained by Chuck Treece, was claimed for $8,000 as a 2-year-old specifically to run 870 yards. But the gelding did so well in shorter races that he competed in them until this month. And now, three years and more than $200,000 later, Brotherly is proving that 870 yards is his distance.

“We knocked off the two best in the Breeders [Marathon],” said Mark Shannon, who owns Brotherly with Sherri Barham and George and Shirley Loeb. “The two biggest 870-yard races of the year, we won. He’s undefeated at 870 yards. The two biggest competitors [for champion distance horse] would be Speedy Lunch and Miami Prince, and he beat them both twice.”

Speedy Lunch’s trainer, Brian Koriner, doesn’t see it that way.

“My horse ran in five stakes all year long, then ran second to [Brotherly], then ran a dull one,” he said. “We were still a pound over Brotherly, even though he outran us at even weights [in the Breeders Marathon]. Sometimes when they put this much weight on a horse, it may not hurt him that race, but it will the race after. As the year goes on it wears on him.”

Should Brotherly be named champion distance horse, he would be the sixth Marathon Handicap winner to earn that honor since the award was first given in 1987.

“I think it was Speedy Lunch’s championship to lose and Brotherly’s championship to win,” Shannon said after the Marathon Handicap. “I think that may have happened tonight.”

*

Los Alamitos has changed Saturday’s first live post from 7:15 p.m. to 5:15 p.m., effective this Saturday and continuing through the end of the meet on Dec. 17.

The post time was changed because of problems Los Alamitos had been experiencing with heavy fog, which caused the cancellation of nine races on Nov. 18 and delayed races on Nov. 25.