James Dreyer, a Champion of Champions winning jockey and one of the best Quarter Horse riders during Los Alamitos’ golden era of jockeys in the 1960s and ‘70s, passed away on Monday, August 11 after an illness. He was 82.
Born February 26, 1943, Dreyer was from Scranton, Pennsylvania. He enjoyed an outstanding 18-year riding career at Los Alamitos, winning 535 Quarter Horse races and 46 stakes races at Orange County oval. Many of those victories came aboard Ed Allred and Kenneth Wright’s legendary AQHA Hall of Famer and World Champion Charger Bar, who Dreyer piloted to victory in the second running of the Champion of Champions in 1973. Dreyer also rode the great Go Josie Go, who was a dominant Quarter Horse in the local ranks in both 1965 and 1966.
Following the conclusion of his riding career, Dreyer was a track official and worked in the Los Alamitos racing office for 20 years. He then served as a racing steward in California for close to 25 years.
Dreyer’s riding accomplishments came while being a part of some of the greatest jockey colonies ever assembled in Quarter Horse racing. Starting in the 1960s through the early 1970s, Dreyer was part of a jockey’s room at Los Alamitos that included all-time greats like Bobby Adair, Danny Cardoza, Charles Smith, Kenneth Hart, Ron Banks, Luke Myles, Steve Treasure, Terry Lipham, John Watson, Nolton Pattio, Henry Page, Robert Strauss and many more.
Aboard the champion Charger Bar, Dreyer achieved many of his biggest wins. During the 1971 season, Dreyer and Charger Bar teamed up to win the Los Alamitos Derby, Go Man Go Handicap, and Robert Boniface Los Alamitos Championship. In the years that followed Dreyer and the Wayne Charlton-trained Charger Bar teamed up to win the 1972 Vessels Maturity, then the 1973 Champion of Champions before repeating as winners of the Go Man Go in 1974.
“She was like driving a Rolls Royce,” Dreyer once said of Charger Bar. “She just took care of her business and the rest of the time she wanted to be left alone. She would put on her game face as soon as she stepped on the track. I’m not just saying this because I rode her, but I truly believe she’s one of the five fastest Quarter Horses to ever race at Los Alamitos and the fastest mare to ever race here.”
Dreyer also holds the track record for most wins in the Los Alamitos Championship with six wins, four of those coming aboard the outstanding Go Josie Go. Other top victories included the 1961 Pomona Futurity (now the Ed Burke Futurity) on Golden Note, the 1968 Go Man Go with Go Derussa Go, and the 1966 Kindergarten Futurity with Sompin Special.
“I was a racing fan first and I always admired Jimmy’s riding,” said Ed Burgart, the former track announcer at Los Alamitos Race Course and still the track’s morning line maker. “He rode a lot of horses for Wayne Charlton and whenever I saw a horse trained by Wayne and ridden by Jimmy, I paid attention. Jimmy was quiet but highly respected among his peers. He was straight down the line as far as being pro. He was extremely dedicated to his work. He never believed in being late. The great jockey Charley Smith was his father-in-law, and Jimmy admired his great riding ability along with others like Bobby Adair.”
At Ruidoso Downs, Dreyer was third in the 1961 All American Futurity on Golden Note before returning in 1964 to win the first Rainbow Futurity aboard Double Queen for trainer Don Farris and owner Clarence Scharbauer. For his many great moments in Quarter Horse racing, Dreyer would be inducted into the Ruidoso Downs’ Racehorse Hall of Fame in 2015.
Dreyer married Smith’s daughter, the late Charla Dreyer, and was a stepfather to her son, Jim Burke.
“My mom and Jim got together when I was four,” Burke said. “He was a great guy. He provided for my mom and made my mom very happy for 50 plus years. He took care of me when I wasn’t his and did me right. He was a great man and he’s going to be missed dearly.
“I was very young when he retired from riding, but I know what the other great jocks said I about him was that he was a money rider,” Burke added. “When you needed a pilot not to make a mistake, Jimmy was your guy. He started with Thoroughbreds and then moved to Quarter Horses. Chuck Taliaferro (leading trainer in the early 1960s) was a big part of his life. He was an Army reserve and that (shaped) how he lived his life. I remember when he was a kid, and he wasn’t riding anymore, that he would still do 100 pushups and 100 sit-ups every morning. I realized as I got older, Jimmy and I got really tight in the last few years after my mom passed. He’s going to be missed.”
Ron Church, currently a steward with the California Horse Racing Board and before that the racing secretary at Los Alamitos, worked as Dreyer’s agent from 1973 until the rider’s retirement in 1977.
“This is not like losing a friend, it’s like losing a brother,” Church said. “Jimmy gave me my start in Quarter Horse racing and he and I were close for a great number of years. I became his agent thanks to Jay Robinson. Jay and I grew up together (in Northern California) and after I was discharged from the service I came down south. I wasn’t doing much at the time and Jay asked me if I would consider being an agent for Jimmy, who was riding Charger Bar at the time. That sounded like a move that I might want to make, and Jimmy gave me a chance. We’ve been friends from there forward.
“Jimmy was a very quiet guy, that was his personality,” Church said. “He was a quiet rider as well. He was a rider that could sit still on a horse and get a lot of run out of them.”
After Dreyer’s retirement in 1977, the two would end up working together again in the Los Alamitos racing office with Church eventually becoming the racing secretary with Dreyer as his assistant.
“Jimmy helped me get that job in the racing office as well,” Church said. “I never called Jimmy assistant racing secretary, it was always ‘He and I’. We worked together.”
Dreyer retired from the Los Alamitos racing office in 1998 for an opportunity to work as a racing steward at Rillito Park in Arizona. He also worked as a patrol judge on the Northern California Fair Circuit before eventually returning home to Los Alamitos Race Course to work as a racing steward. He worked in that capacity for over 20 years until his illness forced him to stop earlier this year.
“He was very devoted to whatever he did, placing judge or racing office. I think he missed one day of work in all those years. He became a steward, and I think he missed one day of work in 20 years,” Burke said.
“After he stopped riding, we got to know each other outside of the track,” Burgart added. “We would socialize on days off and got to know each other well. As a racing steward, it was all about being a top professional for him. He would arrive at the track early and would study the race film closely. He wanted to make sure riders rode horses carefully and always made himself available to them to talk about race riding.
“After I retired in 2019, I always made sure to spend time with him whenever I was back at Los Alamitos,” Burgart said.
After drawing his final card as racing secretary at Los Alamitos, Church followed Dreyer’s lead and also became a racing steward in California.
“Dreyer did more for me than I did for him,” Church said. “His association with Charger Bar is my fondest memory of his riding career. He thought the world of that mare. I saw him (just about) every day for the last 50 plus years. Jimmy was a great race rider, and he was a class act. I’m going to miss him and the industry will miss him.”
James Dreyer is preceded in death by his beloved wife, Charla Dreyer, and is survived by his stepson Jim Burke, his wife Candice, and his nephews Cliff and Rob Smith. For more information, please call 714-820-2690.
