Jones goes three deep in First Down Dash

Paul Jones, who leads the nation's Quarter Horse trainers with 22 stakes wins this year, could capture the final stakes of the year-long Los Alamitos season when he sends out Grade 1 winner Value the Man among his three horses in the $40,000 First Down Dash Handicap on Saturday night.

Jones, the six-time defending national training champion, could add to his 2008 stakes total next weekend when he is expected to send out Ketel Won to defend his title in the Grade 1, $400,000 The Championship at Sunland Park and fastest-qualifier Three Past Six in the Sunland Park Winter Derby.

Value the Man was among the best of the 2-year-old division in 2005 when he won the Los Alamitos Two Million, but he hadn't shown that form again until this fall. During the Fairplex Park meeting in September, he won the Pomona Championship and then surprised when he made the big class jump to finish second in the Grade 1 Los Alamitos Championship at 19-1 odds. He had a troubled start, but was beaten only a half-length by Ten Oclock Scholar.

Jones will also run Separate Bet and Boys All Jacked Up, a pair of Grade 1-level horses at Ruidoso Downs, in the First Down Dash.

Separate Bet is trying to regain the form he showed at Ruidoso in the summer of 2007 when he dominated the Grade 1 Rainbow Derby, set the 400-yard track record in an allowance, and was second in the Grade 1, $500,000 All American Derby as the 2-5 favorite.

He has made three starts at Los Alamitos this fall, with a win and second in conditioned allowance races.

Boys All Jacked Up competed in a strong 3-year-old division at Ruidoso this past summer and was fourth in the Grade 1 Ruidoso Derby. He finished behind champion Heartswideopen, two-time Grade 1 derby runner-up Strong Hope, and All American Derby winner Noconi. The Stoli-sired Boys All Jacked Up comes off a track-record-setting 330-yard conditioned allowance win at Los Alamitos when he was timed in 16.28 seconds for the rarely run distance.

Sunland: Two stakes for statebreds

Grade 1 winner High on Cat and track record setter Ms Regard head two stakes for New Mexico-breds at Sunland Park.

In Saturday's $125,000 Challenger Six Handicap at 870 yards, High on Cat returns to statebred competition after scoring an upset victory in the Grade 1 Red Cell Distance Challenge Championship at Evangeline Downs on Nov. 9. He went off at 19-1 odds, but rallied through the lane to defeat strong favorite Tricky Dust, a leading contender for 2008 champion distance horse honors.

The top-two finishers in the $148,000 New Mexico Classic Cup 870 Championship, Devons Easy Lane and Mr Frenchman, will test High on Cat.

In the $125,000 Lou Wooten Handicap, a 400-yard race for statebred fillies and mares on Sunday, Ms Regard will be favored to score her sixth straight victory. Two starts ago, she set a Zia Park 300-yard track record and comes off a 1 1/2-length win in the $125,000 New Mexico Fillies and Mares Championship.