Danjer looks for repeat of last in AQHA Challenge Championship

Breeder, owner, and trainer Dean Frey said his base is where his horses take him, and on Saturday night he will call the Downs at Albuquerque home when he starts probable favorite Danjer in the Grade 1, $250,000 American Quarter Horse Association Challenge Championship.

The 440-yard race for 3-year-olds and up is the richest of five Challenge races on a 10-race card that starts at 4:10 p.m. Mountain. There are a total of 10 stakes on the card, with the Challenge races part of the AQHA’s annual series that features qualifiers at various tracks throughout the year. The program Saturday night is called the Challenge Championships, and for the second year in a row it is being hosted by Albuquerque.

Danjer is one of three horses Frey will have on the card, with his other Challenge starter Bad Monkey in the $125,000 Juvenile. He also has homebred Kowboy Jim in the $40,000 Downs Casino Stakes.

Frey bred, co-owns, and trains Danjer, who won the Grade 1, $300,000 Downs at Albuquerque Fall Championship in his most recent start Sept. 25. He was a neck best one start after finishing second by a neck in the Grade 1 All American Gold Cup at Ruidoso Downs. Frey said there were a number of reasons to target the race at Albuquerque.

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“Good money,” he said. “It’s a championship race, a Grade 1. We finally got that monkey off our back, getting a Grade 1 with him. And, one of my partners, Billy Smith, is an Albuquerque resident. He grew up in Albuquerque. So that was a big thing for him, too.”

It also gives Danjer the best kind of prep over the track, as he won the richest race on offer at Albuquerque. For the Challenge Championship, which offers its winner a berth into the Champion of Champions at Los Alamitos, the horse will break from post 10.

“He won the Championship here out of the 10-hole, so it would be pretty bad to complain about it,” Frey joked. “We’re happy. We hope everybody has a good trip.”

Others making up the 10-horse field include Eagles Fly Higher, who was second in the Downs at Albuquerque Fall Championship and who won the Grade 2 Challenge Championship at Prairie Meadows. He will break from post 2 on Saturday.

Bad Monkey will start as a top contender in the Juvenile Challenge after qualifying for the 350-yard race at Ruidoso Downs. He is a winner of 3 of 6 starts and exits a ninth-place finish in the Grade 2 Dash for Cash Futurity on Sept. 27 at Lone Star Park.

“He just kind of was [playing] around in the gate and got himself left,” Frey said of his homebred. “I don’t blame anybody other than him. He was about like a 12-year-old boy. He’s got that personality about him. He’s got his mind in a lot of different places.”

But one thing is for certain with Bad Monkey.

“He’s a pretty good talent,” Frey said.

The chief threat could be Tres a Jess, who has won his last two, including a qualifier at Los Alamitos. Purty Darn Quick brings the same 3-for-6 record into the Juvenile Challenge as Bad Monkey.

The Grade 1, $100,000 Distaff is for fillies and mares at 400 yards, and the chief players appear to be Splendid Cause, a winner of two stakes in her last two starts in Oklahoma, and Jr Prissys Blood, a winner of her last three races in what were her first starts against older rivals.

Cm Once Ina Bluemoon will have to overcome post 8 to win his fifth straight race in the Grade 1, $100,000 Distance Challenge Championship.

Light Footed will be looking for his fourth straight win when he starts in the $150,000 Derby Challenge Championship. He will be first-time Lasix.