Chaiken's best joins track hall

GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas - Carole Chaiken was a winner at both Lone Star Park and Hollywood Park last weekend. She was in Texas because Dixie Dot Com, a horse she raced in partnership with her husband, Don, and Bart and Ronelle Heller, was being inducted into the Lone Star Park Hall of Fame. And while she was here, Chaiken watched on simulcast as Premium Quality, one of 33 horses she has in training, won a maiden special weight at Hollywood Park.

Chaiken last visited Lone Star in 2001 to see Dixie Dot Com win both the Grade 3, $300,000 Texas Mile and the Grade 3, $300,000 Lone Star Park Handicap. He is the only horse to have swept the two richest dirt races on the Lone Star calendar, and for the accomplishment he was inducted into the track's hall of fame on July 12.

His name is now in raised letters on the grandstand, along with the hall's other newest members, Bill and Corinne Heiligbrodt and Clarence and Dorothy Scharbauer. Chaiken came in from California to attend the induction ceremonies.

"It's kind of like having one of your kids in the Olympics or something," she said. "All of us in horse racing always hope to have a horse that's No. 1, a stakes horse, and the fact that he won two of the major stakes here and has been inducted into the hall of fame, it's very special."

Chaiken, who has raced horses for 24 years, said Dixie Dot Com is the best horse she has owned. A son of Dixie Brass, he was a multiple Grade 2 winner who earned $1.3 million. Dixie Dot Com stood stud in California before dying last year of a heart attack, Chaiken said.

"What I didn't know was that his father had died of a heart attack at 13," she said. "And Dixie died of a heart attack at 12.

"He had probably maybe 120 babies or so. He had four or five crops. I had a lot of them over the years. I probably owned 30 of those babies.

"I have one more, and that horse is Aloha Dixie, and that's the last of the ones I have."

Aloha Dixie will be a 2-year-old in 2009.

* Dynamic Cowgirl will return to turf, site of her last win, in the featured eighth race Sunday. The first-level allowance at a mile is restricted to fillies and mares bred in Texas. Quincy Hamilton has the mount for trainer Danny Pish.