DEL MARDEL MAR — In the late-1990s, the Del Mar media relations crew would offer writers gifts that included futures tickets for the track’s Futurity winner at the following year’s Kentucky Derby.
So Dan Smith, whom the press box is now named after, and Mac McBride drew out $500 from track coffers, drove to Las Vegas and snapped up $10 win tickets.
In 1996, the group was able to lock down 50-to-1 odds for a horse that rapidly was becoming a hugely promising 3-year-old. And … Silver Charm won the ’97 Derby.
“It was a way of continuing the interest in racing,” Smith said.
One of those getting a very profitable ticket was legendary San Diego broadcaster Ernie Myers.
“He lost the ticket,” Smith said.
Smith, McBride and longtime San Diego Union and Union-Tribune horse racing reporter Hank Wesch laughed during a recent roundtable, talking through Del Mar’s connections to the Derby on the verge of its 150th running.
Four Futurity champions — Tomy Lee (1958), Gato Del Sol (1981) and American Pharoah (2014), along with Silver Charm — carried winning ways into the Derby the next year.
Long odds extended to the 2005 race, when Giacomo and veteran Southern California trainer John Shirreffs rocked the bluebloods at 50-1.
For Shirreffs, a three-time Breeders’ Cup winner, it was his sole Triple Crown win. He finished in the money, though, with Giacomo at the 2005 Preakness Stakes and, in 2007, Tiago in the Belmont Stakes.
“I was on the notes teams (in 2005), assigned to Shirreffs,” McBride said. “He was so loosey-goosey the whole week. He said, ‘We don’t have much of a shot here, but we’ll see how it goes. He wins it, bigger than life. He was just laughing. ‘Sometimes you get lucky and we got lucky.’ “
The Derby is an exhilarating exercise in dreaming, for horses with sterling pedigrees and others with no more than a puncher’s chance. It’s a 20-horse cavalry charge with peril always a blink away among all that traffic.
One wrong decision and a horse can be pinned on the rail or trapped behind slower movers. One right decision and the sport’s most famous race can be yours.
Sometimes, the circumstances can be a double-you-over gut punch.
Five years ago, Rancho Santa Fe owners Gary and Mary West had a legitimate shot at contending with a horse named Maximum Security. Though the horse crossed the finish line first, what happened 22 minutes later made it arguably the biggest stunner in Derby history.
Rider objections led stewards to “take down” Maximum Security, in racing parlance, and place the horse behind the last horse ruled to have been impacted.
That meant a Derby winner finished 17th. Country House, a 65-1 longshot, was awarded the victory as the industry gasped.
“Darren Rogers from Churchill Downs had to go to Mary West and say, ‘Mary, I need those roses back,'” McBride said. “Maximum Security came back the next year and won (Del Mar’s) Pacific Classic.”
Résumés can soar with a hot Derby run. Trainer Bob Baffert stacked back-to-back Derby wins with Silver Charm and Real Quiet in 1998.
“That’s when Baffert exploded on the scene and became the man,” McBride said.
Wesch recalled a few other details.
“I it as the ‘Frat Party Derby,'” he said. “Baffert and owner Mike Pegram were all drinking Coors Light and having a grand ol’ time. I Baffert invited (late Orange County reporter) Steve Bisheff and I into the tack room. He introduced us to (actress) Ashley Judd.
“At the end, Steve said, ‘I can’t read my notes.’ I said, ‘I can’t either.’ We were starstruck.”
Some with roots in San Diego changed the game at its highest levels.
Late Chargers owner Gene Klein paired with Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas to sow up the 1988 Derby with Winning Colors. It was far from their only collaboration.
“The combination of Klein and Lukas, they revolutionized racing,” Wesch said. “With Klein’s money and Lukas’ aggressiveness, Klein figured out you could buy a lot of top horses, like having a big number of draft choices in football.
“He spent big and gave Lukas free rein. They were a major factor for many years.”
The more the stories flow, the more you appreciate the trio’s deep connections to Del Mar and the sport.
Smith began working for Del Mar in 1964, but made his first visit to the track in 1949. McBride, who first visited the track in 1968, turned it into a job in 1981. Wesch, a fan since 1969, covered the place where “The Turf meets the Surf” from 1985-2010.
Depending on your math, there’s about 125 years of institutional knowledge of Del Mar and horse racing’s crown jewel. Smith said one issue with the modern sport is that horses achieve success in the Derby, then chase money of another kind.
“You don’t have the stars coming back,” he said. “They establish a reputation (then they chase big-money breeding rights). That’s too bad. It would be like (NFL quarterback) Patrick Mahomes retiring after the first couple years.”
The history of both places, Del Mar and the Derby, remains rich though.
A horse named Canonero II was racing at Del Mar in 1970.
“They used to put earmuffs on him,” Smith said. “When he arrived at Churchill (in 1971), you could count every rib. I said, being all wise, that’s what’s wrong with the Derby, running horses like that.
“Well, he won.”
In those days, the racing form did not pick past performance lines from other countries. That made Canonero II, from Venezuela, a mystery.
“The track there was at light 6,000 or 7,000 feet, so he was doing altitude training down there,” McBride said.
The stories flow and flow and flow.
Among that group, they might never stop.
