Pick Six Confusion at Races : Power Outage at Santa Anita Causes Scramble in Trash

A power outage and a public relations gaffe touched off a mad scramble on a windy and wild Saturday afternoon at Santa Anita.

The loss of electricity, caused by a fire at a nearby Southern California Edison power plant, shut down the tote board at the Arcadia track at 3:55 p.m., immediately after the seventh race.

Attempts to switch to an auxiliary power system proved futile since Edison was unable to free the line, fearing that a sudden surge of power might aggravate the blaze.

The lights were not operational until 5:05. In the interim, track officials decided to run the California Breeders’ Champion Stakes as a non-wagering race, and to postpone the ninth race. That was a minor annoyance to the 37,719 spectators, who spent most of the day huddled underneath the bleachers trying to avoid gusting winds that averaged 50 to 60 m.p.h.

But when announcer Trevor Denman stated that track officials had decided that all Pick Six tickets would be refunded, the fans came out in a hurry . Normally, most Pick Six bettors throw away their tickets after seeing a couple of their selections in the third through eighth races finish out of the winner’s circle.

Denman’s announcement created pandemonium. People scrambled to the nearest garbage can, hoping to find discarded tickets, either their own or those thrown away by other bettors. Others were doing their scavenging on their knees, and still others carted huge garbage bags to the parking lot, where they rummaged through them hoping to find any discarded Pick Six tickets that could be redeemed for $2 or more each.

“Whoever finds mine will be able to buy groceries for a family of 10 for a month,” one bettor said.

After the eighth race, however, and just as most of the fortune hunters already were heading for home with the tickets that they planned to redeem for refunds at a later date, General Manager Ray Rogers announced to the media that Santa Anita was reversing its field.

“We decided that the eighth race was an official race for the payment of purses,” Rogers said. “Therefore, since the Pick Six pool was closed before the third race, it will be calculated and the winners will be paid off.”

Rogers’ fallback position was that the initial announcement was hasty, due in part to a lack of communication.

“We were all responsible,” he said. “Communications were bad. We’re upset that some people were inconvenienced.

“We lost power, we lost two races. No one likes to see these things happen.”

So, the upshot of the sequel to the Marx Brothers’ A Day at the Races was that the Pick Six is official, and there will be no refunds for anyone holding losing tickets.

There were five tickets with all six winners, each worth $37,260. Another 291 tickets had five winners, each ticket worth

Rogers said a race had never been lost due to a power shortage in the track’s 50-year history.

Jockey Bill Shoemaker, who has been riding for more than 30 years, said it was new to him.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,’ he said. “One time, the police shut us down because of a terrible rainstorm, but never because of the power.”

Horse Racing Notes

On a day of power outages, it was fitting that The Rogers Four, a colt with oil connections, won the $100,000-added Champion Breeders’ Stakes. The Rogers Four, ridden by Chris McCarron, is owned in part by Lonnie Stein of Brentwood. “He’s named after an oil well my partners and I hit that made more than $15,000 a day,” Stein said. The victory paid $69,600 to Stein and his partners, Robert Franklin and his mother, Evelyn Stein. Trainer Darrell Vienna said his horse didn’t need to be in the lead to set the pace and he proved to be a prophet as McCarron stayed just off the leader Teddy Naturally and then challenged in the upper stretch. He had enough to hold off hard-charging Nostalgia Star. . . . Laffit Pincay is in the midst of an 0-for-19 slump, but he says it’s too early to be worried. “I’ve been in worse ones than this,” he said. “A lot worse. It can turn around in a hurry.” McCarron agreed. “It’s not like baseball, that’s more of an individual thing. Here, you get up on a nice, big horse and they can buck you up fast.” . . . Trainer Melvin Stute, who said he was having a bad day at the windows before the power went out, saw Right Con finish fourth in the feature. “I hope the lights get back on,” he said with a laugh. “They’ve got to let me get a chance to get even.” . . . A meeting will be held this morning to decide the status of Saturday afternoon’s aborted ninth race. Stewards will either cancel it or add it to a future program.