Sun, Sand, Surf and Turf

Summer again and time for Del Mar, the quaint horse racing emporium by the sea 17 miles north of San Diego and a couple of hours by train or freeway from downtown L.A. But why go there, when you could be basking on some beach nearer to home or lounging in your backyard with the latest Grisham propped up on your lap, or, if you want to go racing, watching the horses cavort on a TV screen somewhere?

For the people who really love the horses, the question is easily answered by an old racetrack maxim: “What’s the best thing in the world? A winning day at the races. What’s the second-best thing? A losing day at the races.” Or, as they say around Del Mar after a bad day at the betting windows, “Just another lousy day in paradise.”

You don’t have to love this sport, as I do, or be a hooked gambler to enjoy Del Mar. Unlike elsewhere, Del Mar is largely devoid of the air of seedy desperation that afflicts the premises of many of the larger tracks, with their depressing contingents of citizens blowing their grocery money at the windows.

The scene is ruthlessly relaxed and casual, with hordes of beautiful young people sprawled in folding chairs on the apron in front of the grandstand and families picnicking on the infield grass, while the horses and riders strut their stuff on the dirt and turf courses before them. They’re not running behind glass, distant specks hardly visible to the naked eye.

At Del Mar, you are intimately involved in one of the sport’s great spectacles. The protagonists are right there in close-up in the paddock, below a sweep of open terraces, or on the tightly curved racing surfaces close enough to you to convey a true sense of what the game is all about. Only Saratoga in upstate New York provides the same old-fashioned feel and a setting of comparable beauty, when racing could be considered a truly sporting pastime.

No matter how beautiful the spectacle, however, the secret to having a really great time at any racetrack is winning, or at least not losing the grocery money. You can have fun, but the racetrack can also seem an intimidating place to a novice, who suddenly finds himself competing at the parimutuel windows with a hard core of dedicated punters.

“Nah, I don’t go to the track every day,” I heard one of them tell a newcomer some years ago. “Only when it’s open.” These are the wise guys who have not only mastered the readily available information provided by the Daily Racing Form, but have moved on to higher planes of learning involving such arcana as speed ratings, track variants, blood lines, trip factors and enough statistics to short-circuit a laptop.

Essentially, they believe that if you pile enough numbers on top of one another, you can reach the pot at the end of the rainbow, a dogma as touching in its innocence as a total trust in the kindness of strangers. What you should notice about most of these citizens is that few of them are driving new cars.

This is not to say that knowledge and information are useless, but only that less is sometimes more. Every race is a puzzle whose solution can provide an instant payoff, but the track is no place to make a living. And if, like most of us who love this sport, you don’t plan to devote your life to wallowing in figures, the secret is to relax, trust in what you do know, and above all, manage your money correctly.

Begin your day at the races by getting to the premises early enough to secure a good parking spot and reserved seats near the finish line. Bring along a good pair of binoculars and wear comfortable clothes. If you don’t know how to read a past-performance chart or figure a speed rating, don’t worry about it. You can attend one of the handicapping seminars on the premises or you can bet on the horses picked by the experts or you may even decide to play hunches.

There are dozens of ways to get to a winner and the idea is to have a good time, not try to make a living at it. Remember, however, that you’re in competition with all the other bettors there. So, to avoid getting into trouble, here’s my list of Golden Rules, 15 of them. Not as definitive as the Ten Commandments Charlton Heston brought back from the Mount, but merely designed to keep you cheerful and solvent:

1. If you think you can pick your own winners, do your homework before you go to the track.

2. Once you get there, don’t pay for anything you can get free, don’t be afraid to ask questions, and insist on being treated well.

3. Value is the name of the game. Bet small to win big, not big to win small.

4. Take only what you can afford to lose. Don’t borrow money, don’t lend it, and stay away from the ATM machines.

5. Every bet you make in any one race must show a net profit. Never bet merely to get your money back or cut your losses.

6. If your horse is 4-1 or better, you must have a bet on him to win only.

7. Don’t bet every race on the card. Make it a rule to pass at least one or two. This will take pressure off you and give you time to enjoy the scene and do some socializing.

8. Avoid the sucker plays. Pass the across-the-board bets, the pick-nine, the pick-six and the superfecta.

9. Never listen to tips from any source, especially trainers, jockeys, jockeys’ agents, stable help, owners and smiling strangers.

10. Never allow anyone to talk you off the horse you like.

11. Do not head for a betting window or a ticket machine until you know exactly how you are going to bet.

12. Always check your tickets before leaving the window. Clerks make mistakes, and they’re almost never in your favor.

13. Never bet on a horse to do something in a race it has already proved convincingly it cannot do.

14. Bet less when you are losing, more when you are winning.

15. If you’re not having a good time, leave. Don’t chase your money. Go sit on the beach, sip a glass of wine, take a plunge in the surf. At the racetrack, it’s always tomorrow.

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Novelist William Murray has written 12 books with a racing background. His latest is “The Right Horse: Winning More, Losing Less, and Having a Great Time at the Racetrack” (Doubleday).