Tailor Fit Sizes Up the Spencer Childers

Tailor Fit was only an ad inside a magazine before he became a cover boy. Now he has made the trip from Texas to Los Alamitos again, this time by plane instead of a dusty horse van.

That’s what winning a world championship--quarter horse racing’s version of horse of the year--will do for a 5-year-old gelding.

Tailor Fit, the 1999 national champion, took the overland route--all 1,500 miles of it--to the Orange County track last year, but he was flown in for Saturday night’s $150,000 Spencer Childers California Breeders Championship Handicap.

“When he got beat here last year, the wheels just fell off,” trainer Steve Van Bebber said. “I don’t know what it was, maybe the first time he’d been trailered that far, or the slight case of colic that he got about three days before the race. He was dehydrated, but we thought we had it under control. Afterward, I thought that maybe I shouldn’t have run him.”

He was referring to last October. Tailor Fit was more than beaten in the MBNA Challenge Championship, finishing fifth and losing by 1 1/2 lengths, which might as well be the length of the stretch in the quarter horse game.

Five weeks later, he regained his form in Texas, winning the Refrigerator Stakes at Lone Star Park, and then in December he wrapped up the horse-of-the-year title when Van Bebber flew him back to California for a victory in the Champion of Champions at Los Alamitos.

The Champion of Champions was Tailor Fit’s fifth victory in seven starts in 1999. He’s opened this year with two wins, both at Remington Park in Oklahoma, and Saturday night, at 400 yards, he’ll break from the No. 1 post in a 10-horse field and be ridden by Joe Badilla for the first time.

Last year, Gilbert Ortiz and Steve Fuller rode Tailor Fit, and Jacky Martin was aboard for both of his victories this year.

Martin is riding The Casanova in Saturday’s race, but Van Bebber said it was his decision to hire Badilla, a four-time national riding champion who has won many of Los Alamitos’ biggest stakes and was voted national champion last year.

“I’m not saying Jacky’s lost the mount,” Van Bebber said. “But Joe was available, he’s the best there is and I’ve just decided to try him. We’ll see what happens after this.”

Tailor Fit, who races for Betty Jane Burlin of Navasota, Texas, has won 16 of 23 starts, with four seconds, and earned $369,822. Before Burlin bought him at the start of last year, for $130,000, the California-bred son of Strawfly Special and Silk Skirt was owned by Tom Ward of Oklahoma City.

“Tom was in oil, and his business got turned upside down,” Van Bebber said. “So he got out of racing and sold all his horses.”

Van Bebber, 50, is a Texas-based horseman who has been training for 28 years, always dreaming that a quality horse like Tailor Fit would come along. When Tailor Fit was a yearling, he was picked out by the trainer’s wife, Janet Van Bebber, who represented Ward at the Pacific Coast Quarter Horse Racing Assn.’s sale.

The late Jens List Jr., who founded Sonic Industries Inc., a manufacturer of aircraft fastening devices, before he launched Double Bar S Ranch in Moreno Valley, had consigned Tailor Fit to the auction.

“I give Janet all the credit,” Steve Van Bebber said. “She had seen a picture of the colt in the old QuarterWeek magazine and liked what she saw. We had had another son of Strawfly Special that looked something like this colt, and he had done fairly well. So Janet flew out to California for the sale.”

Janet Van Bebber had budgeted $20,000 for Tailor Fit, but hung in when the bidding exceeded that, and got the horse for $24,000, a figure that topped the sale.

Still a yearling, Tailor Fit was coming off the training track one morning at the Van Bebber ranch near Houston. The colt reared up and nearly assaulted Steve Van Bebber, who was on his pony.

“He’s been a well-mannered horse, but something happened to him that day,” Van Bebber said. “He got very rank and tried to stab me in the back. So we gelded him.”

That means Tailor Fit won’t be able to pass on his brilliance, but the upside for Burlin and the Van Bebbers is that he’ll continue racing as long as he’s sound.

“I’ve had several good ones over the years,” Van Bebber said, “but nothing like this one.”

Saturday night’s Spencer Childers Handicap is part of a $1-million card for California-breds that includes 11 other stakes races. Richest race of the night will be the $380,000 Governor’s Cup Futurity. The rest of the Childers field, starting on the outside of Tailor Fit, consists of Ganster, The Casanova, Kingman Kid, Old Habits, On Reflection, Bono Jazz, Pride Of Katella, Express King and Swingin Val.

*

* HOLLYWOOD PARK, PAGE 14