Fdd Dreams starts 2026 season against tough field in Championship
Fdd Dreams clinched the title of 2025 World Champion with a nose win in the $700,000 Champion of Champions at Los Alamitos in December.
To start his 2026 season, the now 4-year-old Fdd Dreams will be favored in a 440-yard race worth half as much, Saturday’s $350,000 Championship at Sunland Park.
The field is not half as easy, however.
Fdd Dreams starts from the inside post in a field of 10 that includes Karmalites, the winner of the $702,907 All American Oaks for 3-year-old fillies in Albuquerque last September; Shakers No Secret, who won the 2025 Championship at Sunland Park; Hooked N Gone, the 2025 champion aged horse; and Kj Desparado, who has earned $3,367,447, an all-time high for a Quarter Horse.
“It’s a very complete field,” said trainer Javier Rodriguez, who owns Fdd Dreams through his La Feliz Montana Ranch.
The Championship at Sunland Park, the top race for older Quarter Horses in the early month of the year, was scheduled for last Saturday, but postponed because of poor weather conditions. The delay means Fdd Dreams will have eight weeks between starts.
“The extra week will benefit him,” Rodriguez said. “He had a hard year last year.”
Rodriguez said earlier this week that Fdd Dreams will be given a rest after Saturday’s race, with the goal of a return to racing in California in the fall in the build-up to the 2026 Champion of Champions in December.
Trained by Bobby Rodriguez, who is not related to the owner, Fdd Dreams won 5 of 8 starts and earned $1,210,129. Aside from the Champion of Champions, Fdd Dreams won the Ruidoso Derby at 400 yards at Ruidoso Downs in June, and the All American Derby at 440 yards at Albuquerque in September.
Saturday’s race will be the first start from an inside post for Fdd Dreams since the Ruidoso Derby.
Kj Desparado starts from the outside post in his first start since a win in an allowance race at Ruidoso Downs last June that was meant to lead to stakes appearances in the second half of 2025.
Trained by Wes Giles, Kj Desparado has not raced since June. A return at 440 yards will be difficult for the 7-year-old gelding who has won 18 of 31 starts. To his credit, Kj Desparado has returned from layoffs of at least six months three times in his career and won on each occasion. None of the comeback victories were in top-level stakes, though.
Kj Desparado races for John and Kathy Lee and Ruben Mares, who also start her 4-year-old gelding Kj Born to be Wild, who was third in the All American Derby and second by a neck in the Texas Classic Derby at Lone Star Park on Nov. 15 in his last two starts in stakes.
Kj Born to be Wild will start from post 9 and will race against older horses for the first time on Saturday.
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