This Will Be Her Toughest Opener

For decades every July, John Mabee would put on his best clothes, go out to the racetrack he nurtured and entertain a table full of guests on opening day.

“That’s what’s going to make it tough,” Betty Mabee said. “John not being there.”

She was talking about today’s 63rd opener at Del Mar, the first her husband will miss since the Eisenhower administration. John Mabee, a horse owner since 1957, spent the last 32 of his 80 years in the Del Mar boardroom, first as a member and then as president and chairman of the track. He suffered a major stroke this spring and died April 24.

He was married to the former Betty Murphy for 60 years, a romance that began during the Depression when they rode their horses to a schoolhouse in Middle America. Betty and her son Larry, 59, are carrying on. Betty has even moved into the boardroom at Del Mar, only the second woman in track history to hold such a post.

“I hope there will be more,” she said. “There are a number of women in racing who are very qualified.”

Joe Harper, the president and general manager of Del Mar, welcomed the newest Mabee to the board several months ago.

“I couldn’t imagine Del Mar without a Mabee on the board,” Harper said. “With Betty, we get a remarkable woman who has the expertise and a warm and special style besides.”

There’s a bit more to her plate than just the racetrack. On the personal side, her husband left behind Golden Eagle Farm, a 568-acre sprawl in Ramona, and hundreds of horses, all kinds of horses: Horses in training, horses on layup, yearlings, unraced 2-year-olds, stallions waiting for the next breeding season and about 170 broodmares in California and Kentucky.

Having worked with her husband while they cranked out three Eclipse Awards for breeding and six state breeding awards, she does not need a crash course in the nuances of the game. The sheer quantity of horseflesh under her watch might be daunting, but she is not blanching from the task.

“My son and I are well-grounded people,” she said. “Larry’s spent his whole life in the family’s other businesses, such as grocery stores and real estate, and he’s a man of many talents. He can bring a lot of those sound business principles to the racing and breeding side.”

The first thing Mabee had to do following her husband’s death was to quash all the rumors. The most obvious speculation was that Golden Eagle might go away, which would leave a cavernous hole in the industry.

“It seemed like there was a different story every day, one more outlandish than the other,” Mabee said. “The dumbest one I heard was that we were considering the sale of all our stallions in a package. We might need some downsizing, but we’re not going to be doing anything like that.”

The Golden Eagle stallion contingent is led by General Meeting, who after eight crops and almost 300 foals is ranked second, to Smokester, among California-based stallions. A son of Seattle Slew, General Meeting has sired General Challenge, winner of the Santa Anita Derby, Santa Anita Handicap and Pacific Classic, and Excellent Meeting, a filly who won four Grade I races and earned $1.4 million.

The Pacific Classic, first run in 1991, is a $1-million race that John Mabee urged his board to approve in order to give Del Mar an identity that he felt it lacked. The Mabees won the first running with Best Pal, who had earned $5.6 million and was already retired when he suffered a fatal heart attack at the farm in 1998.

Betty Mabee looks at Golden Eagle’s equine inventory and realizes that many horses must go.

“We’ve just got to reduce our breeding and racing stock,” she said. “With all the horses we’ve accumulated, it can become an endless cycle. You look at all the 2-year-olds we have, and it just makes you ill. If we don’t do something, we’ll end up racing them against each other when they’re ready to run.”

Golden Eagle has consigned eight horses--including two fillies and one colt by General Meeting--for the yearling sale that will be held at the Del Mar HorsePark on Aug. 11-12, and more Mabee bloodstock will be seen this fall at California sales as well as at Keeneland in Lexington, Ky.

Meantime, Betty Mabee has been steeling herself for an opening day without her husband. She believes in strength in numbers.

“I’ve invited a lot of the people that John would have had if he were still here,” she said. “People that gave me support at a time when John wasn’t well. He had two strokes, you know, and after the first one he wasn’t totally incapacitated. He actually did quite well after that. But then the second stroke hit him and that was just too much.”

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War Emblem, the winner of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, will not run in the Haskell Handicap at Monmouth Park on Aug. 4. He is likely to run against older horses in the Pacific Classic, another $1-million race, at Del Mar on Aug. 25. War Emblem is owned by the Thoroughbred Corp. of Prince Ahmed bin Salman, who died of a heart attack Monday.... Sunday Break, with a stifle injury, is also out of the Haskell. The high weight in the race will be Came Home, who was assigned 122 pounds, two fewer than War Emblem.

The Thoroughbred Corp. has a horse in both divisions of today’s Oceanside Stakes. Johar will run in the first half and Ecstatic is entered in the second.... With no family members actively involved in the prince’s racing interests, it is likely that his horses will eventually be sold.... Mizzen Mast, idle since winning the Strub at Santa Anita in February, won’t be ready to run in the San Diego Handicap on Aug. 4.

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*--* Del Mar 2002 Dates: 63rd meeting runs today through Sept. 11 (43 days). No racing on Tuesdays Post time: 2 p.m., with the following exceptions: 4 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 2, Aug. 9 and Aug. 16; 3:30 p.m. on Aug. 23, Aug. 30 and Sept. 6; 12:30 on Aug. 25 (Pacific Classic Day) Major races: $400,000 Ramona Handicap (Saturday), $200,000 Bing Crosby Handicap (Saturday), $400,000 Eddie Read Handicap (Sunday), $300,000 Del Mar Oaks (Aug. 24), $1,000,000 Pacific Classic (Aug. 25), $250,000 Del Mar Debutante (Aug. 31), $300,000 Del Mar Derby (Sept. 7), $250,000 Del Mar Futurity (Sept. 11) 2001 meet leaders: Jockey, Alex Solis (35 victories); Trainer, Bob Baffert (29 victories) Information line: (858) 793-5533 Web site: www.delmarracing.com

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