Hovdey: Two-year-old races Reddam’s playground

There is plenty of historic precedent for an owner-trainer combination to dominate 2-year-old racing out West. Give a good, aggressive barn the right kind of ammunition, enjoy the right kind of luck, and the targets will fall.

Tommy Doyle once ran rampant with the homebred youngsters of E.B. Johnston. D. Wayne Lukas and Eugene V. Klein were nearly unstoppable with their store-bought 2-year-olds, as were Brian Mayberry and the Mace Siegel family.

This year, the story of 2-year-old racing in California begins and ends with the runners of Paul Reddam, whose flashy colt Nyquist ran amok in the $300,000 Del Mar Futurity on closing day last Monday for trainer Dough O’Neill and stable jockey Mario Gutierrez.

In fact, as September dawned, the California stakes program was found to be not deep enough for the Reddam bench. Earlier on Monday, the owner watched from afar as Ralis carried his colors to a one-sided win in the Hopeful Stakes at Saratoga. That’s the Hopeful, as in Man o’ War, Native Dancer, Secretariat, and Affirmed. That Hopeful.

Other than his imported colt Wilko, the surprise winner of the 2004 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Lone Star Park, Reddam has made most of his headlines with runners at least 3 years old. He has won a Travers with Ten Most Wanted, a Breeders’ Cup Turf with Red Rocks, a Met Mile with Swept Overboard, a Donn Handicap and Godolphin Mile with Spring At Last, and a Kentucky Derby and Preakness with I’ll Have Another. He was asked if he’d ever had such rapid-fire success with 2-year-olds.

“That would be a clear ‘no,’ ” Reddam said. “But as you know, luck plays so much a part of this game.”

So does family. The seeds of the Reddam onslaught were sown in 2008, when he imported the 2-year-old colt Square Eddie from England. He was a son of Smart Strike who was bred in Canada by Kinghaven Farm and sold as a yearling for $200,000. Carrying Reddam’s colors practically right off the boat, Square Eddie won the Breeders’ Futurity at Keeneland, then followed that with a game second to Midshipman in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Santa Anita. Both of those races were over synthetic main tracks.

Square Eddie never cashed on the promise of his 2-year-old season, but he was never devalued. He competed against top company before finally retiring to California stud duty at the Vessels Stallion Farm in Bonsall, just down the road from the San Luis Rey Downs training center.

There have been four 2-year-old Reddam stakes winners this year, and while each struts his own stuff, a scorecard is helpful to tell them apart.

Nyquist, the winner of Del Mar’s Best Pal in addition to the Futurity, is a classic, unmarked bay with dark leggings, mane, and tail. Mrazek, the winner of the Graduation Stakes at Del Mar, is a chestnut with four white stockings and a blaze that isn’t finished until it wraps around his upper lip. Ralis, who was second to Mrazek in the Graduation, is also a bay but with a small white punctuation mark between his eyes. Found Money, who beat Mrazek in the Santa Anita Juvenile, is a chestnut with two hind white stockings, a star, and a snip of white.

Ralis, out of the Ten Most Wanted mare Silar Rules, is “silar” backwards, a tribute to the name of a hedge fund run by a friend of Reddam’s that went belly up. Backwards, get it?

Petr Mrazek and goalie Gustav Nyquist play for the Detroit Red Wings, the favored team of Reddam’s Canadian youth despite growing up in the shadow of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

“I’m in partnership with some horses with Erik Johnson, who plays for the Colorado Avalanche,” Reddam said. “I named those colts just to annoy him, although whenever Nyquist’s name comes up, Erik will say, ‘I scored on him, you know.’ ”

Johnson is not involved in any of the Reddam stakes winners, but he does have a piece of Where’s the Dee, a filly who won a maiden race on the Del Mar Futurity card. She is by Blame.

“More fun at Erik’s expense,” Reddam said.

As for Found Money, it is not, as one would suspect, a rejected advertising slogan for Reddam’s CashCall short-term lending and mortgage company.

“I’m sure when they got money from CashCall, they thought it was found money, though it doesn’t always happen,” Reddam said, playing along.

The three Reddam stakes winners by Square Eddie were bred by Reddam. The odd boy out is Nyquist, by Uncle Mo, who was a $400,000 Reddam purchase on March 4 at the Fasig-Tipton sale of 2-year-olds in Florida. Three months later, Nyquist won a maiden race at Santa Anita, one of seven 2-year-old winners for Reddam during the meet.

“It’s coincidence that the early stars this year are colts,” Reddam said. “We do have three fillies who we think are pretty special, as well as a Twirling Candy colt we were very high on. He was hurt in June and is now back on the track, but he won’t run until the end of the year probably.”

His name is Nowhere Man, which is where Colorado finished at the end of the 2014-15 NHL season. But Reddam is probably just a Beatles fan.