West Points: A teaser plus a winning poker hand equal a runner

Jet Phone is a teaser. That isn’t said disparagingly. Teasing happens to be his job.

As most of you probably know, that means his job is to put mares in, well, an amorous mood before they visit a stallion. Jet Phone works at Valor Farm in Pilot Point, just north of Fort Worth. But his job description could change soon, depending on Aces N Kings, who just might be one of the fastest 2-year-olds seen at Lone Star Park in years. He makes his debut Friday.

But this story actually begins nine years ago, when a son of Phone Trick out of the Alydar mare Jet Route was foaled at Valor Farm.

“He just took your breath away,” said Ken Carson, the general manager of Valor Farm, which is owned by Clarence Scharbauer of Midland, about the youngster who would be named Jet Phone. “He looked like a little version of Phone Trick.”

When it came time to prepare Jet Phone for the races, he was sent to Diamond D Ranch in Lone Oak. Operated by Caroline and Ed Dodwell, with their son, Scooter, Diamond D prepares young horses for the races. In other words, it’s sort of a school for racehorses, and among its graduates there are about 150 stakes winners, including the 2009 Horse of the Year, Rachel Alexandra.

Back in 2003, Jet Phone was a star pupil. From Diamond D he went to trainer Bret Calhoun. And in November, Jet Phone won his debut by nearly four lengths at Hawthorne.

“He was a gorgeous horse,” Calhoun recalled. “And very fast. We just couldn’t keep him together.”

Jet Phone had chronic back problems. And then he bowed a tendon. He didn’t win another race until 2005, for a claiming price of $20,000 at Lone Star. He won again at Remington Park, but when the old back problems returned, Scharbauer and Carson decided to retire him to Valor.

They have bred many of the Valor Farm quarter horse mares to Jet Phone. But for the most part, his part-time job for the last three years has been as a teaser.

“We always liked him,” Carson said. “He’s such a good-looking horse. That’s why we kept him. But he never did enough so that we could promote him (as a Thoroughbred stallion).”

Three years ago, Ed Dodwell decided to breed his mare Pure Mischief to Jet Phone. Not to Early Flyer or Magic Cat or Wimbledon, successful stallions who stand at Valor Farm, but to a teaser.

Dodwell explained that he always liked Jet Phone, the handsome colt who looked like his sire, one of the fastest sprinters ever to step onto a racetrack. Dodwell remembered how fast and talented the horse was as a 2-year-old, how he made stopwatches whistle and seemed to do it easily. And Dodwell said he thought Jet Phone would be a good cross with Pure Mischief, who was something of a precocious speedster herself.

In Lone Star’s inaugural season, 1997, Pure Mischief won her first two starts by a total of 11 lengths. She then ran second in a futurity despite pulling a muscle. But she went on to win two stakes, the Selma at Retama and the Dixie Miss at Louisiana Downs, before retiring with six victories in 10 starts and earnings of $140,237.

The result of their union is Aces N Kings, who’s named after a winning poker hand Dodwell once had – but that’s another story. At Diamond D, where the track is generally deep, Aces N Kings worked three-eighths of a mile in 35 seconds one morning. And here at Lone Star last week, he worked a half-mile out of the gate in 47, effortlessly drawing away by many lengths from whoever that was who had the bad luck to get in the gate with him.

Dodwell said Aces N Kings is one of the fastest youngsters ever to graduate from Diamond D. Maybe the fastest. And that’s saying something.