Santa Anita Racing: Bargain Horse Is in the Money Now

You may have read that a horse by the name of Amazombie won a big race at over the weekend. The name of the race was the Ancient Title Stakes, and the victory by Amazombie probably means the horse will run a Breeders’ Cup race Nov. 5 at Churchill Downs that has a $2 million purse.

The Breeders’ Cup is sort of the Super Bowl of horse racing. The event and Arcadia next year.

In winning the Ancient Title Stakes, Amazombie beat the heavy favorite, a Bob Baffert-trained horse named The Factor. The name at least partially comes from the Fox News Channel show, “The Bill O’Reilly Factor.”

That’s the essence of the news story carried by local newspapers. What Patch aims to do in covering the races at Santa Anita is look for a story behind the story.

So about an hour after the race and the traditional Winner’s Circle interviews, we went looking for Amazombie’s co-owners. They are Tom Sanford, a Pasadena attorney, and Bill Spawr, who is also the horse’s trainer.

We first looked in the exclusive Director’s Room but only found Sanford’s wife Jonell, who we had just met in the Winner’s Circle. She told us to check the public bar in the Club House section called Carlo’s. And sure enough, that’s where we found Sanford and Spawr, drinking beer with friends. They preferred that to the free champagne in the stuffy Director’s Room.

And they had interesting stories to tell.

Spawr and Sanford have been close friends since the late 1970s, having been introduced by a mutual friend. They immediately hit it off because of their love for horse racing.

“Bill trained my first horse,” Sanford said. “I think that was in 1978 or ’79.”

Spawr and Sanford have come a long way since then, and after the Ancient Title win, Jonell, whose full name is Jonell Agnew Sanford, had earlier said of the Ancient Title victory: "This is the epitome."

Tom Sanford said he has never been to Churchill Downs and seemed pretty excited about the prospect of going there with a Breeders' Cup contender.

Amazing Story

How he became a part-owner of Amazombie is a pretty amazing story. As a 2-year-old, the horse went unsold at a sale in Pomona and was later sold to Spawr for a measly $10,000 by a breeder from Hemet as part of what turned out to be a two-horse deal. This horse has already won almost a million dollars.

"I think Amazombie was just a throw-in to the deal," Sanford said. "Bill asked me to come and see him in his stable [at Santa Anita]," Sanford said. "I liked what I saw, and he offered me a piece of him. But your story shouldn’t be about me. Bill is the hero here. Be sure and give him the credit.”

Later in the day, we tracked down the sole owner of a horse that won another big race. His name is B.J. Wright, and he is also from Pasadena. His horse, Jeranimo, won the Oak Tree Mile and might also possibly be headed to next month’s Breeders’ Cup.

What is Jeranimo’s secret to success? It is in the water, according to Wright.

He owns LifeSource Water Systems, a Pasadena company that specializes in whole-house and commercial filters.

“Jeranimo drinks our water,” he said, adding that so do a lot of other thoroughbreds. "It's clean water with minerals still in it."

Wright, who picked the name Jeranimo for the horse, said: “Initially, I wanted to name him Geronimo because Geronimo was such a tough Apache warrior. But that name was taken. Since his dam is named Jera, Jeranimo was a natural.”

Wright said he bought the 5-year-old horse as a 2-year-old for $70,000 in 2008, also at a sale in Pomona.

“I’ve learned that if you want a good horse, you usually have to pay a pretty good price for one,” he said.

Amazombie is a rare exception.

One more thing: You may have read on Patch over that weekend about the wounded Marine who recently returned from duty in Afghanistan after losing both his legs in an explosion and is now part-owner of a horse. His name is Josh Hotaling, and he was at Santa Anita Sunday, walking with the help of crutches on new prosthetic legs.

A victory by Under Protest, the horse that Hotaling owns a piece of because of the generosity of owner Bob Bone, would have made for a great story. But this is real life, so we’re sad to report Under Protest finished fourth and out of the money in the sixth race Sunday.

It’s still a pretty good story, though.