Controversial Rule Costs Corona Chick a Title

Special Leader, who won the Champion of Champions stakes last month at Los Alamitos, was voted world champion running quarter horse by the American Quarter Horse Assn.’s Racing Committee after the title was forced to a controversial second ballot.

On the first ballot, Corona Chick, who received the 2-year-old filly and overall 2-year-old championships, received 28 of the 64 votes cast. Because she is only 2, she needed 33 votes--the majority necessary for a 2-year-old to be named world champion. Under rules adopted in 1989, a 2-year-old who does not receive a majority of the world champion vote is disqualified from the second ballot.

The winner is then selected from he second and third vote-getters--Special Leader with 22 1/2 votes on the first ballot and See Me Gone with six.

Apprehend, the champion aged gelding winner; Refrigerator, 3-year-old gelding; Royal Quick Dash, 2-year-old colt, and Takin On The Cash, the 3-year-old colt and overall 3-year-old champion, received a handful of votes for world champion. The second ballot was cast among members who didn’t vote for either Special Leader or See Me Gone initially. Once those votes were retabulated, Special Leader had 43, See Me Gone 16, and five members didn’t vote.

Other divisional winners included Ed Grimley, 2-year-old gelding; Isaws Sugar Bear, aged mare, and Griswold, distance horse. See Me Gone won the 3-year-old filly title, while Special Leader won the aged champion and aged stallion categories.

Understandably, Frank Monteleone, who trained Corona Chick, a filly that not only set a track record at Los Alamitos last October but also won four of the track’s biggest futurities compiling a record of 10 victories in 12 starts in 1991, was livid.

“It boils down to the AQHA just sticking their head in the sand,” he said Wednesday after the vote. “They lost their credibility with me. It’s not sour grapes; she was the best horse in 1991. Everyone’s telling me that, and everyone can’t be wrong.”

Special Leader won five of 11 starts, including the Champion of Champions and the All American Gold Cup, two major races for older horses.