Wire to Wire

High noon, Friday. More than seven hours before post time at Los Alamitos Race Course the buzz of activity is dizzying.

Tote machines in the grandstand click with wagers on races in Canada and Australia. In the luxurious Vessels Club, maitre d’ Karel Robess adjusts his bow tie, straightens the lapels of his tuxedo and seats high rollers with a taste for thick steaks and fine wine, while deep in the bowels of track headquarters underneath the grandstand, electricians, technicians and carpenters are preparing for another weekend of racing.

With a combination of live racing and satellite wagering, this five-story, 50-year-old Cypress landmark on the border of Orange and Los Angeles counties rarely sleeps.

“It is the busiest race track in California and the West, if not the world,” Los Alamitos owner Edward C. Allred said. The 420-acre facility is open seven days a week for wagering and hosts 51 weeks of racing--with a minimum of four days per week--each year. “Certainly, there are people here 24 hours a day, some literally living here. It’s always going.”

No one knows that more than Stan Kaufman, one of the track’s 550 employees. For the last 10 years he has sold $3 tip sheets, $2 programs, as well as newspapers to the 2,000 or so patrons a day who pass by his small booth at the main entrance.

“This is more like a public relations booth,” Kaufman said. “It’s one of the busiest places at the track. People stop here and ask directions, or they want to know this or that, so we tell ‘em.”

By noon, satellite wagering, which provides nearly 60% of track revenue, has been going on in the grandstand for almost four hours. Ringed with many of the track’s 1,300 television monitors, the grandstand is a $3 throwback to the days when it packed 30,000 people for big races. It is spacious and smelly, loud and bawdy. A sign asks patrons not to spit on its concrete floor. A beer and a hot dog runs $10 and it’s not uncommon for wagering to continue well past 3 a.m. on races being shown via satellite from as far away as Hong Kong.

There are laborers still wearing shop clothes and work boots. A father digs into the pocket of his jeans to place a $2 bet while his young daughter sings softly and plays with a few toys. There are retired people and teenagers. A majority are men. Several languages are spoken.

“You see all kinds here,” said trumpet player Owen Kirschner, 39, who for the last nine years has started post time with the traditional heralding. “This is a slice of life. There are a lot of characters here.”

The track is humming long before horses get to the starting gate.

Gardener Guillermo Ramos, as he has for the last six years, trims and waters pink and white gardenias at the inside rail. Ten-year veteran groundskeeper Jacinto Morales, like his father did for 25 years before him, hauls a long, black watering hose over his shoulder, wets down the winner’s circle and shovels horse manure out of the musty paddock.

Tractors massage sand, silt, clay and redwood bark shavings that line the surface of the mile course. Many quarter horse races, which usually last less than 20 seconds, hinge on how well

horses handle the surface.

“You can’t vary from day to day,” track groomer Rick Hughes said. “If you have a horse that qualifies for a big race one night, the track has to be the same the next time it races or it could affect the outcome. We have to be consistent.”

The windowless jockey room gets busy about 5 p.m., more than an hour before nightly weigh-ins, where 125 pounds is the limit. Jockey Ramon Figueroa, who later that evening would ride First Sovereign to victory in the $270,000 Ed Burke Handicap, spent the afternoon in a sweat box.

Still, cook Eileen DiLaura, 72, has soup and roast pork on the gas stove and jockeys pass the time watching TV or playing a card game called Racehorse Rummy. DiLaura, a track employee, replaced her husband, Sam, six years ago when he died after 27 years on the job. She knows that many jockeys are “flippers.” They eat her food and later vomit to control weight. But that doesn’t stop her from preparing their favorite dishes.

“I’m here more for them than I am here for the track,” she said.

Outside that stuffy room, ambulance driver Stacey O’Brien, puffs on a cigarette at the rail and hopes she’ll have another injury-free night.

“We can go months and never have anything happen and then on one night we can have two or three accidents,” O’Brien said.

Sunset over the barns to the West brings out the grooms, many of whom live in the stables. They saddle horses away from the glare of a million watts of lighting and the booming voice of track announcer Ed Burgart.

In the dimly lit barns, there is an eerie silence broken only by the clip-clop of hooves on asphalt as horses make their way to the track. Young men in boots and T-shirts stand in groups, quietly speaking Spanish to one another. Cigarette smoke wafts from the buildings and there’s an occasional flicker of a portable television set from a tack room.

“This is its own little world back here, our own little group,” said pony rider Dannielle Lheureux,21, who leads horses to the starting gate. “We don’t deal with the outside much.”

Los Alamitos is full of its own little worlds.

In the Vessels Club, the patrons, some in business suits and ties, others in cowboy hats and boots, pay $10 to enter. They perplex head chef Manuel Lira, 40, who serves gourmet meals that include pasta and fish with capers and pork chops served in Grand Marnier sauce.

But porterhouse steaks are requested most.

“Feeding cowboys is a little tricky,” Lira said. “They are real meat eaters.”

The high rollers hang out here, too. Senior clerk Ed Burke, a 41-year veteran, handles $70,000 in bets at the Vessels’ mahogany tote window on an average day, much more than elsewhere at the track.

The clubhouse, offering a separate entrance on the second floor, costs $5 to enter. A little more upscale than the grandstand, it offers a bar, food, a glass-enclosed viewing area and has no dress code.

It’s about 10 p.m. when Manny Loya of Santa Ana walks through the clubhouse door. Fresh off an $800 Exacta the night before, Loya has a hunch about a horse in the next race. It will be the only race on which he bets.

“You can’t win if you’re here all day and night,” Loya said. “I’ve seen too many people try to play catch up and lose.”

That’s a familiar refrain for Tom Thirlby, a self-proclaimed professional gambler. He is working on his third 20-ounce beer of the evening and eating cheese puffs at the bar. He won’t say how much he has lost tonight, but he admits it is a lot. Thirlby’s shirt pocket is full of losing tickets.

“What counts is what happens at the end of the meet,” he said. “This business is one-third knowledge of the horses and two-thirds knowing how to bet the odds.”

Thirlby is holding up the end of the bar with Gabor Sziladi, an auto mechanic from Irvine who describes himself as “a weekend player.”

“Why come here?” Sziladi says. “To get drunk, have a good time and get some money.” Moments later he drops $100 on a thoroughbred race. His horse loses in a photo finish.

“Oh, that was fun!” he said. “That’s what it’s all about. Who can say I didn’t have a good time cheering for that horse? And I lost. I don’t care what they say. That was fun.”

The live racing card ends about midnight. Most TV sets have been switched to Jerry Springer or a late-night sports highlight show, however, there’s still plenty of racing from Australia via satellite in the ticket-littered, trash-filled grandstand.

By 1 a.m. a hush has come over the race course, broken only by the distant sounds made by a small cleaning crew. The grandstand will be hosed down. The carpeting in the Vessels Club will be swept. An armored truck picks up the $650,000 nightly handle under the grandstand.

It is barely 6 a.m. when sunlight finds jockeys returning to exercise mounts. Trainer Felix Payne, hands in jacket pockets, enjoys a cigarette and a cup of coffee aboard a saddled pinto.

Grooms and others have been up for an hour preparing horses.

The phone rings in the press box above the track well before 6:30 a.m. when Ed Reese, 44, arrives. An 18-year veteran, Reese times workouts when trainers call.

“If you didn’t enjoy this business, how could you work until 1 a.m. each night, then get back up and be here by 6:30 each morning?” Reese said.

Thirlby also shows up to videotape workouts for his own betting purposes.

Below, in the infield, the large green tote board lights up, posting odds on the first race from the afternoon card at Del Mar. By 7:40, 50 minutes before the doors to the track open, a line three-dozen deep has formed at the main entrance near Kaufman’s booth. Some patrons snooze in cars waiting for the entrance to open, while others ponder racing forms. A man arrives in a taxi. Admission and parking are free to the early-bird betting that lasts from 8:30 to 11:30 every Saturday morning and it attracts senior citizens and life-long gamblers alike.

When the glass entry door is unlocked, the crowd swarms through the turnstiles. Television monitors throughout the track flicker with races from Eastern Canada and Texas. Tote windows open. Another racing day has begun.

There is free coffee in the clubhouse, where at 9:30 Burgart promptly begins his weekly seminar with handicapper Les Onaka. A crowd of about 50 patrons, mostly elderly regulars, receive a free race program and tips. For most, it appears to be a social event.

Nevertheless, the class moves swiftly through the night’s upcoming card, from race to race and horse to horse. When the seminar ends, Burgart hurries home to shower and change clothes. It is nearly noon, and, like so many others, he’ll be back in a few hours to start all over again.