Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Harvey Baeza’s Van Zant earned a hard-fought victory in the 350-yard, $30,000 Manuel Lujan Stakes for 3-year-olds at The Downs at Albuquerque on Monday.
Van Zant was saddled by Baeza, who gave a leg up to jockey Jesse Levario, The Hawkinson gelding stopped the timer in :17.060 and recorded a career-best 109 speed index while defeating Banjo Bob by a nose. El Campecino, the 5-2 favorite, ran third, three-quarters of a length behind the winner.
Bred in California by Dr. Steve Burns, Van Zant is one of 30 stakes winners sired by Hawkinson, a 13-year-old son of First Down Dash whose six crops have earned more than $7.2 million and include two-time champion Strawkins, his top earner.
Hawkinson was the AQHA champion aged stallion in 2001, after he won that season’s Grade 1 Los Alamitos Winter Championship and Go Man Go Handicap and ran second in world champion Tailor Fit’s Champion of Champions (G1). The stallion stands for a $4,000 fee at Enrique Gonzalez’s EG High Desert Farm at Temecula, California.
Van Zant’s dam, the winning 17-year-old On A High mare Pretty Jet High, was a finalist in the 1995 Rainbow (G1) and West Texas Sun Country (G1) futurities in New Mexico. Pretty Jet High has produced eight winners from 12 starters, including the stakes-placed Ought To Be Higher, Loved Her First, and The Palm, all of whom are half siblings to Van Zant.
Van Zant’s second dam, the Easy Jet mare Omnii Jet, ran second in champion Tolltac’s 1983 Bay Meadows Futurity (G1). Omnii Jet foaled five winners from seven starters, including Omnii Plex, a Seventy One North gelding who won the ’92 El Camino Real Handicap (G3) at The Downs at Santa Fe.
Van Zant traces back to his third dam, the winning Mr Meyers mare Lady Meyers. A 1964 Texas-bred foal, Lady Meyers produced four stakes winners from 15 starters, including 1976 AQHA champion 2-year-old colt Megahertz.
Campaigned exclusively in New Mexico, Van Zant has earned $87,650, and his three wins in 12 races include the 400-yard, $50,000 Animas Stakes at SunRay Park on May 29. The gelding also ran second in last year’s $20,000 Ruidoso Juvenile Invitational Stakes and third, one length behind winner Louisiana Blue Dream, in the $150,000 All American Juvenile Invitational.
Apollos First Down, Jess Good, Winners Cartel, Lady Blue Angel, and Streakin Six Corona completed the order of finish.
Banjo Bob earned $6,000 for his owner, Martin N. Perez. The brown gelding by Grade 1 winner Azoom has banked $32,377 from two wins in 12 races, and he was a finalist in last year’s $38,520 AQHA Central Juvenile Challenge (G3) at Prairie Meadows in Iowa.
A gray colt by SC Chiseled In Stone racing for Ramon O. Gonzalez Jr. of Edgewood, New Mexico, El Campecino has won three of 10 races and has earned $45,770. El Campecino was campaigned in Indiana last year, where he ran third in the 350-yard, $100,000 QHRA of Indiana Stallion Service Auction Futurity (R) at Hoosier Park.