Los Alamitos Futurity

What the Los Alamitos Futurity is

The Los Alamitos Futurity is a Grade 2 race for two-year-olds run over 1 1/16 miles on dirt at Los Alamitos Race Course in southern California, on that track's short winter Thoroughbred meet in December. Los Alamitos' official program for the December 13, 2025 running advertised it as a Grade 2 with a $200,000 purse, while the final charted purse was $200,500.

Its practical role is easy to state: it is a late-season graded race for West Coast two-year-olds, run at a distance most juveniles have not yet tried, several weeks after the Breeders' Cup has closed the national juvenile season. That combination helps it draw attention despite its recent small fields.

It is also a race with an identity problem that this page exists to clear up. The same race has been run under three different names in three different eras, and searching for any one of those names turns up results that look like separate races. They are not.

One race, three names: Hollywood, CashCall, and Los Alamitos

The race was inaugurated in 1981 at Hollywood Park as the Hollywood Futurity, and that is the name under which most of its famous runnings took place. It later carried a sponsor's name after the lender CashCall, whose founder Paul Reddam is a Thoroughbred owner, became associated with it, and it was run as the CashCall Futurity at Hollywood Park in its final years there. When Hollywood Park closed, the race moved to Los Alamitos and took the host track's name.

The transition was not clean, which is where most of the confusion comes from. The sponsor's name did not disappear when the race changed tracks: the 2018 running, for example, was contested as the Los Alamitos Cash Call Futurity, and America's Best Racing's race record for that year lists it under exactly that name. So a reader working backwards through results can find Hollywood Futurity, CashCall Futurity, Los Alamitos Cash Call Futurity, and Los Alamitos Futurity, all describing one continuous race.

The version of the timeline reproduced across reference sites, in which the Hollywood name ran to 2006, the CashCall name from 2007, and the Los Alamitos name from 2014, is broadly right about the sequence but should not be treated as precise on the boundary years, because sponsor names attach and detach by agreement rather than by rule. The authoritative record of which name each running actually carried is Equibase's stakes file for the race, which is the document to check before citing a specific year.

None of the renamings changed what the race is. The distance, the surface, the age restriction, and the calendar slot have carried across all three names. When a pedigree page or a sales catalogue lists a Hollywood Futurity winner, it is describing a win in this race.

• Hollywood Futurity: the original name, from the 1981 first running at Hollywood Park.
• CashCall Futurity: the sponsored name used at Hollywood Park in the track's later years.
• Los Alamitos Futurity: the name from the 2014 move onward, with the CashCall name still attached in some runnings, including 2018.
• Constant across all three: 1 1/16 miles, dirt, two-year-olds, December.

The conditions to check

Two-year-old racing is front-loaded toward sprints, and most juveniles reach December having raced only at six or seven furlongs. A mile and a sixteenth around two turns is therefore a genuine step up for nearly every runner in the field, not a routine assignment. That is the single most useful thing to know about the race's conditions.

Purse, grade, and date are all set annually and all have moved within living memory, so none of them should be carried forward from one year to the next. Los Alamitos publishes a stakes book and a stakes nominations page for each Thoroughbred meet, and those are the documents that govern.

• Surface: dirt, on the one-mile main track at Los Alamitos.
• Distance: 1 1/16 miles, run around two turns.
• Eligibility: two-year-olds, colts, geldings, and fillies.
• Grade: Grade 2 at the most recent running, per Los Alamitos' own stakes material.
• Purse: $200,000 guaranteed at the most recent running, with $120,000 to the winner.
• Calendar: December, on the track's winter Thoroughbred meet.

Why the race left Hollywood Park

Hollywood Park ran its final meet in December 2013 and closed. The site was redeveloped, and southern California lost a track that had carried a substantial share of the state's stakes program for decades. The Futurity was one of a number of races that needed a new home rather than a new identity.

Los Alamitos Race Course, in Orange County to the southeast, took it. Los Alamitos is best known for Quarter Horse racing under lights and runs Thoroughbreds on a separate, much shorter schedule, including a winter meet in December and a summer daytime meet. The Futurity became the anchor of the December dates.

The move changed the race's setting more than its conditions. BloodHorse's assessment, which is secondary reporting rather than an official record, is blunt about the consequences: it puts the average field for the final eleven runnings at Hollywood Park at 9.6 starters against 5.2 for the eleven runnings it compared them with, one of which drew only four horses. A reader comparing a modern edition with a 1990s one is not comparing races of similar competitive depth, and this page would be misleading if it implied otherwise.

The grade history, and what Grade 2 means here

The race held Grade 1 status in its later Hollywood Park years and through its first Los Alamitos runnings. It was downgraded to Grade 2 effective with the 2019 season. BloodHorse reported at the time that the purse was cut to $200,000 in response, that figure being the minimum needed to stay eligible for Grade 2 consideration.

Grades in American racing are assigned annually by the American Graded Stakes Committee of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association, and they describe the quality of a race's recent fields rather than its history or its prestige. A race that consistently draws small fields will lose grade regardless of what it used to be, which is precisely what happened here. Our guide to graded stakes explains how the committee's process works and what a grade does and does not tell you.

The practical reading is that this race's black type is worth what the current grade says it is worth, while its historical significance sits in the names on its honor roll. Those are two different things, and a sales catalog treats them differently. Confirm the grade for the running you care about on TOBA's current list, because grades are reassigned every year.

How the Futurity fits the Road to the Kentucky Derby

The race carries Kentucky Derby qualifying points. Churchill Downs' official Road to the Kentucky Derby schedule for the 2026 Derby listed the Los Alamitos Futurity on December 13, 2025, awarding points on a 10-5-3-2-1 basis to the first five finishers. Litmus Test won that running and moved to second on the leaderboard.

Ten points is a small allocation by design. The series weights races that run closer to the Derby far more heavily, with the major spring preps offering a hundred points or more to the winner, so a December juvenile win is a useful head start rather than a qualification. A horse who wins here and then does not run well in the spring will be passed easily.

Churchill Downs republishes the series each year and races move on and off it, so a December running's points value belongs to the following spring's Derby and should be confirmed against the current published schedule rather than assumed from last year's.

Reading a small-field December juvenile race

This guide does not make selections, and a race with five runners is a poor candidate for confident opinions anyway. A small field changes the arithmetic of the race itself: there is less traffic, a front-runner is less likely to be pressured, and the winner's margin describes the horses who turned up rather than the division.

The stretch-out is the question worth sitting with. A juvenile trying two turns and a mile and a sixteenth for the first time is being asked something its record cannot answer, and pedigree, running style, and the trainer's pattern are all indirect evidence at best. This is a good race to read afterwards, from the chart, rather than to form a strong view about beforehand.

It is also worth keeping the historical honor roll in its place. That a future champion won this race under a different name at a different track is a fact about the race's past, not information about a current two-year-old, and the field sizes above are the reason to be careful about carrying prestige forward.

• Field size: how many runners, and how does that change the likely pace?
• Distance: has the horse been beyond seven furlongs, or around two turns, at all?
• Class: what kind of race was its last start, and against whom?
• Pace: with a short field, is anyone likely to press the leader?
• Race day: confirm official entries, scratches, and track condition before drawing conclusions.

Los Alamitos Futurity history and notable winners

The Hollywood Park era gave the race its reputation. America's Best Racing, the NTRA's publication, lists Best Pal, A.P. Indy, Real Quiet, Point Given, Lookin At Lucky, and Shared Belief among its winners. A.P. Indy became a leading North American sire; Real Quiet and Point Given each won two legs of the Triple Crown; Lookin At Lucky was a champion at both two and three.

That is an unusual concentration of significant horses for a single juvenile race, and it is why the name still carries weight in pedigree material decades later. It is also, as noted above, a description of a period when the race regularly drew fields close to double figures.

The most recent running was won by Litmus Test at the December 13, 2025 edition listed on Churchill Downs' published Road to the Kentucky Derby schedule. For any individual past edition, the official chart is the authority: Equibase publishes charts, results, and the stakes file that records which name each running carried, and those documents settle questions that a summary cannot.

The December 2026 edition

As of the verification date for this page, Los Alamitos had not published a stakes schedule for its December 2026 Thoroughbred meet. TOBA's 2026 American Graded Stakes list already confirms the Los Alamitos Futurity as a Grade 2 at 1 1/16 miles, but the winter meet dates, the race date, purse, and nomination deadlines were not yet posted by the track.

That is normal for a race this far out and it is the reason this section says so rather than repeating last year's figures as though they were this year's. When the track posts its winter stakes book and nominations page, those documents will carry the date, purse, conditions, and nomination deadlines. Its Kentucky Derby points value, if any, belongs to Churchill Downs' series for the 2027 Derby.

Everything on this page was checked against the sources listed below on July 27, 2026. This guide is reviewed annually, after the graded stakes list for the following year is published and after Los Alamitos posts its winter meet stakes schedule, and again if either changes mid-year.

• Confirmed for 2026 by TOBA: Grade 2 at 1 1/16 miles for two-year-olds.
• Not yet published by Los Alamitos at the verification date: the December 2026 meet dates, race date, purse, and nomination deadlines.
• Where they will appear: the Los Alamitos Thoroughbred stakes book and stakes nominations page.
• Grade: assigned annually by the American Graded Stakes Committee and published by TOBA.
• Derby points: set by Churchill Downs for each Road to the Kentucky Derby series.
• Verification date: July 27, 2026. Review cadence: annually, plus a re-check when the winter meet schedule is posted.

Common questions