Los Alamitos: Rylees Boy scrambles World Champion picture

LOS ALAMITOS, Calif. – Quarter Horse racing will have a new World Champion for 2012.

The result of the $750,000 Champion of Champions at Los Alamitos last Saturday night will have a pivotal impact on the championships, which will be announced in January.

Cold Cash 123, the 2011 World Champion, finished eighth in the Champion of Champions, losing a chance to retain his title.

Race winner Rylees Boy won two major stakes for older horses at the end of the year, beginning with the Bank of America Challenge Championship at Prairie Meadows in October. He may not have done enough over the year to earn the World Championship, but is expected to be champion aged gelding.

The 7-year-old Rylees Boy is the oldest winner of the Champion of Champions. He will remain in training in 2013, with the Los Alamitos Winter Championship in February as his first goal, trainer Paul Jones said last weekend.

The World Champion may be One Dashing Eagle, who won 6 of 7 starts, including three major futurities – the Ed Burke Million and Golden State Million at Los Alamitos, and the most prestigious of them all, the All American Futurity at Ruidoso Downs on Sept. 4.

One Dashing Eagle is currently out-of-training after undergoing surgery earlier this month to have bone chips removed from his ankles and a knee. Trainer Jose de la Torre said last week that One Dashing Eagle could return to racing in 2013, be retired to stud, or be bred to mares and then return to racing.

Rylees Boy won the Champion of Champions by a head over the 3-year-old filly Flame N Flash. Earlier this year, Flame N Flash won the La Primera Del Ano Derby and the Mildred Vessels Handicap, against older fillies and mares. Those wins should be enough to gain the 3-year-old filly championship.

Sunday’s Los Alamitos Two Million Futurity was won by the filly Matabari, who could earn champion 2-year-old filly honors. The Two Million Futurity was her only stakes appearance of the year. Matabari was sent to a local ranch for a winter break on Monday and will be pointed to the major stakes in the second half of 2013, trainer Jose Antonio Flores said.

* With no Thoroughbred racing in Southern California this weekend, Los Alamitos will conduct afternoon racing from Friday through Sunday. Post time will be 2 p.m. Pacific each day. The highlight of the weekend is Sunday’s $200,000 Southern California Derby.