Del Mar Features $7.7 Million Worth of Stakes
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Greg Melikov
Jul 14, 2005
Del Mar, where the surf meets the turf, is featuring its richest stakes schedule since opening 66 years ago. Purses exceed $6.7 million, ranging from $100,000 to $1 million for 29 stakes.
Racing begins on Wednesday and offers an additional $450,000 and a pair of new stakes that promises to help the track surpass last year's record season.
Racing Secretary Tom Robbins gave a special pizzazz to the upcoming seaside season. The premier $1 million Pacific Classic on Sunday, Aug. 2, is one of several twin stakes Saturdays or Sundays that will attract outstanding handicap horses throughout the land.
Past winners of the Grade 1 event include Candy Ride two years who broke the track record covering 1ΒΌ miles in 1:59, plus pretty fair thoroughbreds such as Came Home in '02, General Challenge, '99; Free House, '98; Gentlemen, '97; and Best Pal, '91, during the inaugural running.
Other big weekends with double stakes days during the 43-day meeting are:
Saturday, July 21, features the $400,000 John C. Mabee Handicap for fillies and mares 3-year-olds, 1 1/8 miles on the resodded Jimmy Durante turf course, named for one of the Hollywood entertainers who supported the track over the decades.
GN-1 Bermuda replaced a combination of Coast Bermuda, Hybrid Bermuda and Kikuyu. Each type of grass had different growing patterns and watering needs, making it difficult to grow a uniform seven-furlong turf course.
Saturday, July 22, includes the $400,000 Eddie Read Handicap for 3-year-olds and up 1 1/8 miles on the turf, one of six Grade 1 stakes.
Sunday, Aug. 21, includes 20th running of the $300,000 Pat O'Brien Stakes for 3-year-olds and up, seven furlongs, one of 11 Grade 2 stakes that was boosted by $50,000. The race is named for the actor who served a vice president of the Del Mar Turf Club when it was formed in the late '30s.
He and club president Bing Crosby, a racing enthusiast who led the founding group of film stars, put up personal loans against their life insurance when initial funding met with d setbacks.
On Aug. 12, 1938, Seabiscuit nosed out Ligaroti, considered one of the best horses on the West Coast, in a match race before 20,000 fans before heading east to soundly defeat War Admiral.
During 1942-44, Del Mar first served as a World War II training area for Marines, then grandstand became a bomber tail assembly production line for B-17 bomber parts.
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