Day at the Races Doesn’t Put Dent in These Wallets

Jamie Beckman has been betting on the Del Mar horses for a year.

She says she usually loses, but she hopes to win big soon.

So she listened wide-eyed on Thursday as ex-jockey and current PR man Ken Church explained the behind-the-scenes percentages for exactas, daily doubles and triples, and the big one, the “pick six.”

“These tickets can get very expensive,” Church told a private tour of 13. “The price doubles for every extra horse you pick to win the same race. But the other day, we had a pick-six pool of $900,000, almost a million. There’s a lot to be won.”

Jamie thoughtfully played with her long blond hair, which was adorned with a bright red bow.

A Family Affair

Jamie Beckman is 10. She goes to the track with her sister, who is 14, and their parents, who place the bets, she explained. Asked why she keeps betting although she usually loses, she said: “I don’t know. It’s just $2, and I might win.”

“It’s neat,” said another 10-year-old, Ryan McClellan, of his first day at the track.

Why?

“The horses.”

Will he attend more when he’s older?

“Probably.”

Will he bet?

“Probably.”

“We have all kinds of betting. The most common bets are on a horse to win, place or show,” Church said. “You have to be 21 to bet.”

Jamie looked at the betting windows.

Summer Field Trip

The two children, seven others between the ages of 8 and 13, three of their mothers and Carol Sigelman, assistant director of the Children’s Museum, seemed generally to enjoy themselves on the hourlong tour. Sigelman organized the $7 trip as one of a series of nine outings the museum offered this summer in a pilot program.

“This is the winner’s circle. A very special place to be,” said Church.

“Was it fun being a jockey?” someone asked.

“It was fun, especially on payday,” said Church. He said a jockey can make good money if he lands in the winner’s circle often enough, earning 10% of the winner’s share of the purse. “For example, if the purse is $100,000 and the winner’s share is $60,000, the jockey gets $6,000,” Church said.

Some of the children looked uncertain.

“Of course, the net figure isn’t as good. They have an agent, and he gets 25% right off the top. And then there’s the wife, the ex-wives, and Uncle Sam to pay.”

Some Inside Tips

Church warned any would-be jockeys in the group that, since successful riders frequently begin working on ranches in their early teens, their education tends to suffer. But he spoke in hushed and reverent tones about a passing man with a shaved head and tattoos: “There goes the best trainer ever, of all time. Charlie Whittingham.”

The children learned how much thoroughbreds are worth, how much it costs to take care of them, and how off-track betting has beefed up the track’s 16% take.

But during the largely mathematical briefing, many of the children just stared off at the horses running exercise sprints.

Sigelman said she picked Del Mar because it’s something children wouldn’t be able to see on school-organized trips and because the race track’s management was receptive. “These are things that most others really haven’t seen,” she said.

“Ken was amazed at the idea when I called,” Sigelman remembered. “He said ‘Gee, do you really think they’ll like it?’ ”

Joe Patterson, a 13-year-old from El Cajon who has been on each of the daily museum trips so far and who serves on a children’s advisory board for the project, said Thursday’s venture ranked “about in the middle.”

“I like horses, but I don’t know much about it,” he said.

Other destinations have included the La Jolla Playhouse, Montgomery Field, a McDonald’s restaurant and the Union-Tribune newspaper plant.

Sigelman said she got the idea for summer tours from similar programs run by children’s museums in Los Angeles and Boston.