Santa Anita - a long and storied history | Trainer Magazine | European Trainer Article Index

Oct 14

Oct 14 Santa Anita - a long and storied history

THERE would seem to be little historic significance to the seventh race at Santa Anita on October 16, 1988. The sixfurlong allowance event was captured by an Idaho-bred two-year-old named Bet on the Blurr, who won by a head in 1:10.60 under Eddie Delahoussaye. The true significance of the mundane race on a mundane day at the Oak Tree meet comes from discovering the name of the winning trainer. It was the first victory in a Thoroughbred race for Bob Baffert. “I felt like I had just won the Kentucky Derby,” said Baffert, who would go on to win the actual Kentucky Derby three times and is the most recent trainer enshrined in the National Racing Museum and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. In 1988, Baffert, a training star of Quarter Horses for a decade, was beginning an attempted conversion to the world of Thoroughbreds and didn’t know if it would work out. “A Quarter Horse jockey had worked the horse five-eighths in about :58 seconds and couldn’t believe how much slower Thoroughbreds were,” Baffert recalled. “I worried about it because I didn’t know any better.” Baffert eventually figured it out. He has been a towering presence in Southern California and American Thoroughbred racing for most of the past 20 years. When he entered the Hall of Fame in August, he joined such past and present Santa Anita training luminaries as Tom Smith, Red McDaniel, William Molter, Mesh Tenney, Charlie Whittingham, Laz Barrera, Ron McAnally, Jack Van Berg, Bobby Frankel, D.Wayne Lukas, Richard Mandella and Neil Drysdale. The roster of conditioning notables who have done business on the Santa Anita backstretch also includes such potent combinations as brothers Mel and Warren Stute, as well as Mel’s son Gary, and fatherson duos Charlie and Mike Whittingham, Wally and Craig Dollase and Richard and Gary Mandella. Marty Jones, who is carving out a solid reputation of his own, is a third-generation trainer, following his late grandfather Farrell, an eight-time training champion at Santa Anita, and retired father Gary, who twice won the Santa Anita Handicap. These men and the horses they handled – names like Seabiscuit, Swaps, Round Table, Affirmed, John Henry, Ferdinand, Alysheba and Sunday Silence – are among the thousands who have written glorious chapters in the history of the Arcadia, California, track, a saga that will mark its 75th anniversary on Christmas Day. One of the most lasting traditions in American sport since 1977 has been the day-after-Christmas opening of each Santa Anita meet. It was December 25, 1934, a Tuesday, when the picturesque track first opened its doors with the San Gabriel Mountains serving as a gorgeous backdrop. With such national entertainment celebrities as Clark Gable, Fred Astaire and Al Jolson among the nearly 10,000 in attendance, Las Palmas, a five-year-old mare trained by Ted Horning and ridden by Jack Westrope, won the seven-furlong California-Bred Handicap, the track’s first race. She returned $14.60 for winning the top purse in the $800 event. The opening-day feature was the $5,000, one-mile Christmas Stakes, won by High Glee, a three-year-old filly ridden by Silvio Coucci for trainer Tom Healey. Santa Anita was the brainchild of Dr. Charles Strub, a San Francisco dentist who made his fortune with a chain of painlessdrilling centers. Owner and operator of the successful San Francisco franchise in baseball’s Pacific Coast League, he set his racing sights The groundbreaking ceremony (above) for the building of the racetrack in March, 1934; Dr. Charles Strub (right) and his backers built Santa Anita for $1million southward when he was rebuffed in his attempt to build a track in his hometown after California legislated the advent of parimutuel horse racing. The state had struck down all forms of gambling in 1909. Dr. Strub and his backers built Santa Anita at a cost of $1 million and immediately announced that the first Santa Anita Handicap, to be run February 25, 1935, would offer $100,000 in purse money. Both the cost of building the track and the $100,000 purse for a single race were considered foolhardy ventures in a Depression-riddled economy. “I sat with my family in our box and ate hot dogs and read the Racing Form,” recalled Mary Crowe, then 13 years old. “It was great fun.” The oldest of Dr. Strub’s three daughters and third of his five children, Mrs. Crowe was 88 when she died suddenly on August 19, several days after granting this interview. Santa Anita survived to become one of the pre-eminent forces in the sport. Along the way, it became the first track in America to offer a mechanized starting gate and the photo-finish camera. Under the late racing secretary Jimmy T Kilroe, it became the home of the country’s best winter racing and attracted top stables and horsemen from the rest of the country and overseas. In 2010, the Santa Anita Handicap will be run for $1 million for the 25th time. Greinton, trained by Whittingham and ridden by Laffit Pincay, won the first sevenfigure Big ‘Cap in 1986. “I first came to Santa Anita in 1949, when I was 17, as a groom for my uncle, Reggie Cornell,” recalled McAnally, who saddled John Henry for back-to-back triumphs in the Santa Anita Handicap, in 1981 and 1982. “He trained Silky Sullivan, who was famous for coming from way back to win races and won the Santa Anita Derby in 1956,” McAnally, now 77, said. “I won my first race at Santa Anita, with a claimer named Hemet Star, in 1952. I didn’t have many good horses like my uncle then – or many horses at all – but I thought I was on my way up after that first win.” Two of the most notable figures in Santa Anita’s history were there on opening day, and for many years thereafter. One was racecaller Joe Hernandez, who was in the announcer’s booth for Las Palmas’ triumph in the Christmas Day opener – and for a total of 15,587 consecutive Santa Anita races. The creator of the “There they go!” cry that made him a national institution, he didn’t leave the microphone until January 27, 1972, several hours after he was kicked in the stomach by a pony at Hollywood Park while visiting several horses he owned. Hernandez died six days later. He called the victory by ex-steeplechaser Azucar in the inaugural Santa Anita Handicap, and Seabiscuit’s memorable victory as a seven-year-old in the 1940 Santa Anita Handicap. But his most memorable call may have been his portrayal of Johnny Longden’s winning ride aboard George Royal in the 1966 San Juan Capistrano Handicap. It often is considered the most dramatic moment in the track’s history because at the age of 59 Longden was making his last appearance in the saddle. Years earlier Hernandez had been Longden’s agent and he remained one of Longden’s closest friends. As George Royal neared the wire in a head-to-head duel with Plaque, Hernandez poured out his emotions. “Joe wanted Johnny to win that race so bad,” recalled Terry Gilligan, who would succeed Hernandez as Santa Anita’s racecaller after the latter’s death, “that I think he helped that horse get to the wire.” Noble Threewitt, then at 21 the youngest licensed trainer in North America, ran a An aerial view of Santa Anita racecourse at Arcadia in 1934, with the San Gabriel mountains in the background E Anita as a racetrack from March 10, 1941, until May 15, 1945. Through much of that period, the track served as an assembly center for detained Japanese-Americans, who later were sent to relocation camps. “It’s not one of the proudest times in Santa Anita history,” recalled George Yoshinaga, whose family briefly lived in converted horse stalls and who later became a columnist for the English-language edition of Rafu Shimpo, the Los Angeles Daily News for Japanese-Americans. “But I served in the United States Army because I felt it was my duty as an American and I never regretted it,” said Yoshinaga, still writing regularly at the age of 85. Not all Thoroughbred champions who appeared at Santa Anita won on any racetrack. During the 1984 Olympic Games, Santa Anita hosted the equestrian show jumping and dressage events. England’s Prince Philip, head of the International Equestrian Federation, ran the show from the office normally occupied by racing secretary Kilroe. His messages were fielded by Nancy Wallen, who recently marked her 40th anniversary at Santa Anita. The top horse at the Olympics was an 11- year-old mare named Touch of Class, with whom Joe Fargis won gold medals in individual and team show jumping. Under her original registered name, Stillaspill, she had raced six times at Penn National, Bowie and Charles Down. She finished as close as seventh twice and never earned a cent. “She was no good as a racehorse and no good as a hunter,” Fargis said. “But she was a super jumper.”

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