AQHA Racing's reigning Champion 3-Year-Old Empressum will make his West Coast debut in the trials to the Grade 1, $156,300 Vessels Maturity on Saturday night at Los Alamitos..

© Dustin Orona Photography

LOS ALAMITOS, CA—JUNE 9, 2022— Led by AQHA champion Empressum and Circle City, an outstanding cast of twenty top aged runners will be in action in the trials to the Grade 1, $156,300 Vessels Maturity on Saturday night at Los Alamitos.

First post for the 10-race program is 7:15 p.m.(PDT).

The list of hopefuls will include eighth stakes winners, four of them being Grade 1 winners.  The horses with the 10 fastest times in the 400-yard trials advancing to the Vessels Maturity final to be held here on Sunday, July 3.

Owned and bred by Ed Allred, Circle City will begin his Vessels Maturity title defense when he heads the first of three trials. Slated as the eighth race on Saturday’s card, the opening Vessels trial features three of the four Grade 1 winners.     

Circle City dominated the Vessels final last year, winning by 3/4 lengths after finishing strongly for second in his trial. Since that victory, the multiple Grade 1 winners has won the (RG1) Spencer Childers California Breeders Championship Handicap and the Kaweah Bar Handicap, while dancing in all the major races in his division.

Top jockey Jesus Rios Ayala, who has twice piloted him to stakes wins, will ride the Favorite Cartel gelding for trainer Scott Willoughby.  

Steve Burns’ You Can Run, winner of the (G1) Go Man Go Handicap last year, and EG High Desert Farms’ Bail Czech, the winner of the Spencer Childers in 2020 are the other Grade 1 winners in this race.

This field will also feature Town Policy Handicap winner Just A Dasha Hero, the graded stakes placed runner Old School Icon and Butte Creek Ranch Inc. and Rod Lowe’s Up Is Up, who was a Vessels trial winner last year.   

The second trial is a wide-open event with Rancho AA, LLC’s Valiantt and Taos River Ranch LLC’s 2020 futurity winner Speed Dynasty heading the field. Sixth in the Grade 1 Texas Classic Derby last year, Valiantt has done extremely well in his two local starts. He won against strong allowance competition in his local debut on March 13 and then came back to run third to Circle City in the Kaweah Bar on April 30.

His allowance win came from the rail and that’s where he finds himself for this start. Speed Dynasty won the La Fiesta Futurity in Albuquerque during his juvenile year and has also raced in a pair of $100,000 consolation stakes at Ruidoso Downs. He’ll be making 2022 debut and comes in having won in four of 12 starts. Multiple Grade 1 finalist Up And Atem, multiple graded stakes finalist La Estrella Corona and multiple stakes winner Mister Tornado will also race. 

The final trial of the night will be headed by Jeff Jones and Steve Holt’s Empressum, a winner of four derbies in three states, in 2021  on the way to being named the AQHA champion 3-year-old gelding. Trained by Heath Taylor, the Oklahoma-bred son of Apollitical Jess won 9 of 10 starts and earned $969,755 last year.

For his career, Empressum has earned $1,098,629. He’ll enter his Los Alamitos debut after running second in The Championship at Sunland Park on January 2. He has not started since that race. Rodrigo Sigala Vallejo, who piloted him to wins in the (G1) Ruidoso Derby, (G1) Rainbow Derby and (G1) Texas Classic Derby, gets the call here from post three. 

Ed Allred’s Monopolist, winner of the (G2) PCQHRA Breeders Futurity in 2020, and Cattail Cove, second in the 2019 Two Million Futurity, are among the stakes veterans facing Empressum in this trial.

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For more info, please contact larace@losalamitos.com.  Follow us on Twitter or Instagram at @losalracing or visit us online at losalamitos.com.