Blazin Son justified trainer Cody Joiner’s pre-race confidence with an easy win in the Feb. 5 time trials for Saturday’s $138,250 Los Alamitos Maiden Stakes for 3-year-old Quarter Horses.Before the trials, Joiner spoke highly of how Blazin Son had responded to training after being gelded last fall. Blazin Son won his division of the trials by 1 3/4 lengths, setting the fastest qualifying time of 17.37 seconds for 350 yards.The successful trial race makes Blazin Son a logical favorite for Saturday’s final, a race that Joiner expects to win – and needs to win. The Maiden Stakes is the most lucrative race in which Blazin Son has been nominated until the Golden State Derby in August.“This horse is training good so good right now,” Joiner said. “He’s built up so much confidence in his ability. I’m looking for him to run a great race.”Blazin Son crossed under the wire in front for the first time in the Maiden Stakes trials, the gelding’s seventh start. In a maiden race at Los Alamitos on Dec. 18, Blazin Son was promoted from second to first after a rival was disqualified.The track was sloppy, and sealed, on Dec. 18, and similar conditions could exist on Saturday evening, with a forecast of rain. Such a surface does not concern Joiner.“It could have a positive impact,” Joiner said. “When he won the maiden race, it was a wet track.”Blazin Son, by the late stallion First Down Dash out of the 2007 champion aged mare Blazin Fire, is owned by Vessels Stallion Farm, which co-owns another leading contender in the Maiden Stakes in Icy in the Morn, one of four runners trained by Adan Farias.Icy in the Morn was trained by Cody’s father, Mike, at Ruidoso Downs last summer, but was fifth and sixth in trials for the Rainbow and All American futurites. Icy in the Morn made her next start for Farias, winning a division of the Maiden Stakes trials in 17.44 seconds after a layoff of more than five months. “She was reaching really nicely and her time was very impressive,” Farias said of the trial victory. “I think she needed the experience.”Icy in the Morn is one opponent that Joiner fears, especially since she was unlucky at times last year.“She falls into Murphy’s Law,” he said. “If it could go wrong it did. She’s always shown a lot of talent.”