CARDEN TRADES IN TRACK FOR THE RACETRACK.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

The last time K.C. Carden went to the track in Southern California, it was smaller and the world in front of him was a lot wider.

He was a high school quarter-miler from Texas, one of two 17-year-olds selected as alternates for the U.S. squad at the 1984 Olympic Games. If one of the stars of the 4x400-meter relay team had been injured, K.C. might be carrying around a gold medal today.

``Our role was just to be there,'' he said this week. ``It was basically like the Super Bowl, where you have a lot of guys sitting on the bench, hoping somebody will get hurt for a brief moment and they can go in and get on national television.''

Nobody got hurt.

At the Coliseum, K.C. cheered as Sunder Nix, Ray Armstead, Alonzo Babers and Antonio McKay sprinted to the fastest 4x400 recorded at sea level up to that time. K.C.'s shot at national TV would have to wait.

Sunday night, he gets it.

The last decade has seen K.C. Carden go to Oklahoma State, have a disappointing running career but graduate and become a track coach, then quit and abruptly begin a career working with racehorses.

Sunday, with ESPN providing live coverage, Carden will saddle two quarterhorses he has been training for the Champion of Champions, the signature event of the long season at Los Alamitos Race Course in Orange County.

He is 29 - the youngest horseman in the race. He has been a full-time trainer for only three and a half years. As recently as five years ago, he was raking stalls at a track in Minnesota that had just closed, leaving Carden without enough money to get back to Texas.

There are many reasons that Carden's rapid success is a surprise. One of them - but, he said, not a major one - is the fact that he is African-American in a sport with few African-Americans.

I don't know whether to believe him when he says his color has never been a factor in his racing career, that he'll walk through Los Alamitos' swanky Vessels Club on Sunday and nobody will bat an eye.

I do know that at the racetrack, winning will open any door. Nobody tears up a live ticket because the jockey is Puerto Rican, or refuses to stand in the winner's circle beside a Jewish trainer.

Still, there aren't many black trainers, and none except Carden who are running horses in a $300,000 race this weekend.

``I don't know why we don't have more blacks in this business,'' he said - between polite ``yes sirs'' - on the phone from the San Luis Rey Downs training center in San Diego County. ``There are a lot of black (rodeo) cowboys. I think we just have to have more people step up to the plate, work hard and make it happen.''

Not long ago, the man who runs San Luis Rey flew Carden in from his home in Elgin, Texas, to speak to a group of Los Angeles inner-city kids. He preached the value of effort.

``I told those kids, `If you're a garbage collector, be the best garbage collector you can be,' '' he said. ``People spend too much time pointing fingers at other people, making excuses why they can't succeed in life.

``I can't ever say that being black has held me back, because that wouldn't be true. If you're trying, if you're honest and if your word is true, people are going to treat you well.''

``When I was in Texas,'' he said, recalling a time when he was scuffling at little Manor Downs, ``the first guy who came to me, with six horses, he was white. He didn't look at me any different. I didn't look at him any different.

``I look at it like this: Maybe I'm getting help because I'm the only black guy in the business, making the effort.''

He wouldn't be in the sport at all if, growing up in Dallas, his mother's boyfriend hadn't had a ranch with horses and if 15-year-old K.C. hadn't taken a job with Polar Bear Ice Cream so he could buy two cheap pleasure horses of his own.

``I'd always had a real strong interest in horses,'' he said. He gave up coaching to seek his fortune at racetracks in Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota. His first horse, bought for $1,500, won a $1,400 purse the next day. He used that money to buy a second horse, who won at 40-1 odds. Bouncing around the bush tracks in Texas, he sent a horse to the Sam Houston Futurity and won it.

That's how he's done it: parlaying success into success. Now he has 17 horses and a ranch - Futurity Farm - in Elgin.

In November, a Texas friend, an owner named Andra Meridyth, fired her trainer and asked Carden to take her best horse to Los Alamitos. The horse, Winalota Cash, is the defending world champion quarterhorse, and the 5-2 second choice in the early odds for the Champion of Champions, which matches 10 winners of the year's biggest races.

When the trainer of Kool Kue Baby, a contender for the aged-mare championship, decided to stay in Texas this week, Carden wound up accompanying her to Los Alamitos as well. Kool Kue Baby is likely to be the fourth or fifth choice Sunday.

``I haven't had anything happen that tells me I should go back to coaching,'' he said with a laugh.

Going from track to the racetrack shouldn't sound so unusual, he feels.

``We (runners) went through the intense training,'' he said. ``We know how it feels.''

Winning Sunday would be, well, a golden moment.

``I'd like to finish the year on a winning note,'' he said. ``But if I don't win it, I can still look those owners in the eye and say we did our best and those horses did their best.

``They're not here because they're lucky. They're not here because someone felt sorry for them. They're here because they're champions.''

That makes three of them.