Qualified by winning the Los Alamitos Super Derby

Wave Carver earned an invitation to the Champion of Champions with a powerful 3/4 length win in the richest race in the nation for 3-year-old Quarter Horses - the Grade 1 $700,000 Los Alamitos Super Derby on November 3. Ridden by Ramon Sanchez for trainer Paul Jones, Wave Carver left the gate from post three, just a couple of steps behind early leader Perrys Queen Bug. He took the about 100 yards into the race and it was all over from there. With his victory in the Super Derby, Wave Carver accomplished something his older brother Ocean Runaway failed to do last year. Ocean Runaway, who has since been retired to stud, ran second to Apollitical Time in the 2005 Super Derby before getting his revenge by winning the Champion of Champions a month later. Meanwhile, Apollitical Time ran third. Nearly a year later, Wave Carver will look to duplicate Ocean Runaway's exploits in the Champion Of Champions and once again the outstanding mare Apollitical Time will be standing in the way. Interestingly, there are plenty of signs that will favor Wave Carver heading into the Champion of Champions. For example, the last three editions of the Champion of Champions have been won by 3-year-olds sired by First Down Dash and horses bred by Lucas have won the last two runnings. Wave Carver is the only First Down Dash runner in the Champion of Champions field. "Wave Carver will be facing some fabulous horses in the Champion of Champions," said Gary Muller, who campaigned Ocean Runaway last year. "He'll need to be on his game." Wave Carver will stand at stud at Vaughn Cook's Royal Vista Equine in Oklahoma next year.

Since 2001, trainer Paul Jones has saddled 15 horses in the Champion of Champions. He will add three more to that number in 2006, as he trains Blazin Fire, Strawkins and Wave Carver. The four-time AQHA Champion trainer won three straight Champion of Champions from 2002-2004 thanks to Whosleavingwho (2002), The Down Side (2003) and Cash For Kas (2004).

Vaughn Cook and his wife, Jill, operate Royal Vista Equine, a beautiful facility in Purcell, Oklahoma and Fort Collins, Colorado, which Frank "Scoop" Vessels calls the "probably the premiere embryo transfer place in the country." Royal Vista has concentrated on equine reproduction and the development of a nationally respected Embryo Transfer Program. The pride of Royal Vista is its large herd of surrogate recipient mares that are available at both locations. "We probably do about 1,300 embryo transfers a year featuring all breeds," Cook said. "We receive the embryos and we transfer them into the surrogate mares." Cook has campaigned several nice horses at Los Alamitos, including distance star Harbor Beach with Dan Lucas. Retired physician Dan Lucas was honored as the champion breeder in 2004 thanks to a pair of superstars - Champion Ocean Runaway and Champion Cash For Kas. Both of those Lucas-bred horses won the Champion of Champions with Ocean Runaway winning the race in 2005 - one year after Cash For Kas. Lucas could make it three straight, as he is also the breeder of Ocean Runaway's younger brother, Wave Carver. "I would never have dreamed of doing something like this in a million years," Lucas said. He has been involved in horse racing since 1974, but it wasn't until the late 1990s that he got his "big horse." That horse was Corona Kool, the 1999 Champion 2-Year-Old Filly and 2001 Champion Aged Mare. "When Corona Kool won the (2000 Los Alamitos Derby) I never thought I would win another race that big," Lucas said. "We've been lucky in our breeding - we've worked hard - but in the end we've been very fortunate to have this type of success happen." Gary and Cindy Muller campaigned the aforementioned Ocean Runaway, so for them, Wave Carver could make it two wins in a row in the Champion of Champions. No owner has ever won the Champion of Champions in consecutive years with different horses. Gary Muller is the CEO of a life insure company in hometown of Kansas City, Missouri.

As the founders of Los Alamitos Race Course, the Vessels family has a long and proud history in Quarter Horse racing. Continuing the tradition are Frank "Scoop" Vessels III and his wife Bonnie, who own Vessels Stallion Farm in Bonsall, California. Scoop and Bonnie have three sons, Colt, Kash and Bryan. Scoop is the third generation of the Vessels family involved in the American Quarter Horse business. Scoop's grandfather was enamored with the breed and acquired Clabber, the legendary "Iron Horse" that was the first world champion racing American Quarter Horse. Scoop was raised on the backstretch of Los Alamitos Race Course, the racetrack his grandfather founded in the 1940s and his father, Frank Jr., and later his mother, Millie, owned and operated until 1984. Throughout its history, Vessels Stallion Farm has been associated with some of the leading racing American Quarter Horse sires, through Clabber, Alamitos Bar, Go Man Go, Duplicate Copy, Tiny Charger, Timeto Thinkrich, Tolltac and others. Vessels Stallion Farms' pride and joy is all-time leading sire First Down Dash, who is enjoying his best year ever in 2006. He is currently the number one sire of $100,000 earners and number one sire of Grade 1 winners in 2006.