“The horse had something special,” Blane Schvaneveldt said of Town Policy. “There have been other horses that have been as successful, but none has been more popular.”
He won 22 races, including eight stakes races, from 64 starts, and earned in excess of $862,000. He is the only horse to sweep Los Alamitos’ three major divisional races – the Kindergarten Futurity, Los Alamitos Derby and Vessels Maturity – in consecutive years.
Town Policy was by Reb’s Policy (TB), one of the fastest grass horses California ever saw. His dam was Camptown Girl, a double-bred descendant of Three Bars (TB), and winner of two small futurities as a 2-year-old.
At the peak of Town Policy’s career, and only five days after winning the 1977 Fresno Futurity, he was stolen from his stall at Schvaneveldt’s barn in Stanton, California. Owner Ivan Ashment offered a $15,000 reward for information leading to the horse's return. Most rumors pointed to Mexico, where Quarter Horse match racing was very popular. Five months later and 150 pounds lighter, the little bay gelding was found in a Mexico cornfield.
Barely 10 weeks after that, Town Policy won the Los Alamitos Derby, the West Coast’s most competitive Quarter Horse race for 3-year-olds. The gelding beat the field by 2 ½ lengths and set a track record of :21.60.
On January 3, 1984, in an undistinguished allowance race, Jockey Kenneth Hart felt Town Policy take a bad step and start fading to the left, eventually brushing against the inside rail. Veterinarians confirmed later that night that the gelding had broken his shoulder and would have to be euthanized. Town Policy was laid to rest on the Los Alamitos racetrack infield the next day – being the only horse to be so honored.
Schvaneveldt always said Town Policy was more human than horse. Hart is unashamed to say he loved the gelding. Each year on opening weekend, Los Alamitos remembers him with the Town Policy Handicap. He was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 1998.
Biography updated as of March 1998.