Doodah Cartel looks to cement status atop Quarter Horse division in El Primero Del Año Derby
April is still days away, but already Doodah Cartel has gained the position as the leading 3-year-old Quarter Horse at Los Alamitos.
Doodah Cartel won the $202,500 Los Alamitos Winter Derby on Feb. 14 and is the fastest qualifier for Sunday’s $185,100 El Primero Del Año Derby for colts and geldings at 400 yards.
Co-owned and trained by Paul Jones, Doodah Cartel won the last of three divisions of the El Primero Del Año Derby trials by 1 1/4 lengths in 19.73 seconds on March 8 for his third consecutive win. The only other qualifiers to break the 20-second mark in the trials were trial race winner More of It, in 19.88 seconds, and Brother Ray, who was second to Doodah Cartel by 1 1/4 lengths in a time of 19.98 seconds.
On Sunday, Doodah Cartel will be favored, and starts from post 8 in a field of nine. There were 10 qualifiers from the trials, but Jesskeepitgoing, fourth in a division of the trials, was not entered for Sunday’s race.
Doodah Cartel has thrived this year for Jones, Terry Thompson, and Alexis Andrade. A winner of 2 of 10 starts as a 2-year-old, Doodah Cartel qualified for three futurities last year. His best results were fourth-place finishes – by a length in the $1 million Ed Burke Million Futurity last June, and by 1 1/2 lengths in the $1.14 Golden State Million Futurity in October.
Doodah Cartel was given a brief rest after finishing second in a division of the Los Alamitos Two Million Futurity trials last November. He failed to qualify for the final of that race.
“He’s starting to mature, starting to figure it out,” Thompson told Los Alamitos publicity on the night of the trials.
More of It, trained by Scott Willoughby, is the only other runner in the El Primero field on a multi-race winning streak. More of It won a division of the Los Alamitos Maiden Stakes trials at 350 yards on Feb. 1, but he was the 11th-fastest qualifier in a race limited to 10 finalists.
In the first trial for the El Primero Del Año Derby, More of It won by 1 1/4 lengths in his first start at 400 yards since a fourth-place finish in a division of the Golden State Million Futurity trials last October.
The other trial race winner was Unmarked, won by 1 1/4 lengths in 20.26 seconds, the eighth-fastest qualifying time. He was claimed for $16,000 last August and would be a surprise winner on Sunday.
Sunday’s field does not include Enforce or Toby Sis, winners of the Golden State Million and Los Alamitos Million futurities, respectively. They have yet to start this year and are expected to return in the summer.
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