Little Bit Of Baja
4-Year-Old Gelding
(First Down Dash - BCR Pale Moon by Kingdom Key)

Qualified by winning the Z. Wayne Griffin Directors Trial

Lifetime Record: 16-4-3-2, $568,621 2008 Record: 3-1-0-1, $26,035

The connections of Little Bit Of Baja will never forget the night of Friday, November 21, as their sprinter Little Bit Of Baja set himself as a horse to fear in the Champion of Champions following a 400-yard track record victory in the Z. Wayne Griffin Directors Trials. "A track record is something that you never really think about, but when they happen they make you happy," said Frank "Scoop" Vessels. "This horses is peaking right now and we don't know how much better he can be. He's right at the top of his game." Ridden by Rodrigo Aceves, Little Bit Of Baja covered the 400 yards in :19.27, 2/100ths of a second faster than the previous mark set by A Stoli Mate in a trial to the Southern California Derby on November 30, 2007. Little Bit Of Baja will now hope to improve on his result in last year's Champion of Champions, where he finished second to eventual World Champion Blues Girl Too.

Following that race, the champion 3-year-old gelding Little Bit Of Baja had knee surgery to remove chips and later he had the exact same stem cell surgery that was performed and worked so well on Be A Bono's knee a couple of years ago. "Dr. Mark Martinelli did the work on the horse and then he rehabbed at our place," Vessels said. "The horse had some soft tissue problems," said Dr. Martinelli. "What we were hoping to accomplish with the stem cell surgery was to give him a physiological boost. The most important thing that the owners did after the surgery was to give the horse as much time as possible before he started training again." Just like it was done with Be A Bono, stem cells were acquired from a small sample of Little Bit Of Baja's body fat. The cells were harvested for a 24-hour period and then injected back into the horse's knee with the goal of regenerating bone and cartilage. In Be A Bono's case, he returned from the procedure to win the Vessels Maturity, Spencer Childers California Breeders Championship Handicap and Go Man Go Handicap. In the Spencer Childers, Be A Bono covered the final 220 yards in a track record time of :09.24. Little Bit Of Baja made his comeback race on September 27 of this year, running third to Jess You And I in the Go Man Go Handicap. A troubled start in the Los Alamitos Invitational Championship followed on October 25 before he returned to post this impressive race. Little Bit Of Baja's final 220-yard time in Friday's trial was :09.27, the second fastest ever final clocking at Los Alamitos - only behind Be A Bono. Little Bit Of Baja won one of the most spectacular runnings in the 54-year history of the Los Alamitos Super Derby in 2007, defeating an oustanding field in which the top five finishers were separated by only a neck.

Felipe Quintero Jr. trained his father's horses in 2005 and then worked as an assistant trainer for Hector Jaime Hernandez in 2006 when owner Edwin Sirin asked him to train his family's horses. "I jumped at the chance because it seemed like an exciting opportunity plus I love the game. I learned a lot from Hector, so I was looking forward to training horses again," he said. "When I first started training horses I had other commitments that took me away from training. I was still going to school at Cypress College at the time."

Two years later and Quintero is now managing horses for the famed Vessels Stallion Farm and Los Bustardos LLC. Little Bit Of Baja and A Stoli Mate represent his first starters ever in the Champion of Champions. "This is the best feeling in my life," said Quintero after Little Bit Of Baja's record win. "I've never felt this way before. He ran an exceptional race. What a great opportunity this will be for me because I've always wanted to have a horse in the Champion of Champions. Before the Z. Wayne Griffin, I didn't know if we could beat a horse like One Famous Eagle but after this track record performance I think that we can give him a run for his money."

Little Bit Of Baja will have a large cheering section in the Los Alamitos Super Derby final, as he'll be representing Vessels Stallion Farm and Los Bustardos, which is one of the camps of the famous Rancheros Vistadores. Frank "Scoop" Vessels is a member of the Rancheros Vistadores, which has members from across the United States, with most originating from the central and western United States. The group meets on ranch land in Santa Barbara and embarks northward on a 60-mile journey across the countryside. The Rancheros Vistadores had their first full ride in May of 1930. Former United States President Ronald Reagan and former Justice William P. Clark belonged to Rancheros Vistadores. The complete ownership group of Little Bit Of Baja is as follows: Paul Deats, Tim Cox, Sam Cannel, Buzz Shahan, Jim Suft, Steve Rose, Richard Kline, Chris Popovich, Jerry McAlevey, and Vessels Stallion Farm. They each own 10 percent, with McAlevey, a commercial real state investor, serving as the managing partner of the group.

Paul Deats served as a commissioner on the California Horse Racing Board for eight years in the 1980s. "I come and watch every one of Little Bit Of Baja's races," Deats said. "I have a ranch for pleasure horses in Solvang in the Santa Ynez Valley. " Deats added. "I started racing horses here when Scoop's grandfather owned Los Alamitos. His grandfather used to have these spaghetti feeds on Sundays and after eating we would match race our horses. I had a horse that I matched raced here against a horse owned by Bill Lampkin. I went with the Vessels family to President Richard Nixon's inaugural parade." "We've waited for this type of race from Little Bit Of Baja for a long time," said Sam Cannell, a member of the Los Bustardos group, following the Z. Wayne Griffin. "We were never going to make Little Bit Of Baja do more than he was telling us that he wanted to do. It was hard to wait such a long time to see him run again but it was definitely worth the wait. "