Turf’s Up!

Think of Del Mar as the oasis and the rest of the state as the desert on California’s horse racing landscape. Del Mar is so much of a mirage to Hollywood Park, Santa Anita and other tracks whose businesses have capsized.

“We’re one of the fortunate ones,” Craig Fravel, executive vice president of the seaside track, said at a state-of-the-game hearing conducted here Thursday by Sen. Dean Florez (D-Shafter), chairman of the state Senate’s governmental organization committee.

Florez had attended the races on opening day Wednesday, when a crowd of 40,046 gave Del Mar its third-largest attendance ever. The senator was introduced first-hand to the popularity of the Del Mar’s seven-week meet.

“We got caught in traffic, and didn’t get in until the third race,” he said. “But I guess there’s one way of looking at it -- we saved the money we might have lost betting on the first two races.”

Del Mar’s crowd dipped to just under 10,000 on Thursday, but that’s still more than double what Hollywood Park or Santa Anita now draw for their weekday cards. Last year, Del Mar’s daily average attendance was 17,052, a 10% increase over a decade ago. Del Mar’s on-track crowds have increased every year since 2001, when the average was 15,456.

Joe Harper, a grandson of Cecil B. De Mille and the day-to-day head of Del Mar since the late 1970s, has a right to be smug about the track’s continued growth. But on opening day, instead of basking to plaudits in the turf club, Harper worked the plant. He seemed to be everywhere -- checking out the jockeys’ room after one race, standing behind a bay of mutuel clerks after another.

“It’s nice to have a big day like this, despite all the operational problems it brings,” said Harper, 62. “But everybody has to succeed in order for this game to work. You need the horses to put on the show, and the horses we get are by and large the ones that run at the other tracks.”

Harper, along with the rest of the industry, is contemplating the fate of Hollywood Park, recently sold by Churchill Downs Inc. for $260 million to the Bay Meadows Land Co. How long Bay Meadows keeps running races at Hollywood is up in the air.

“I won’t be happy if we’re the people that close Hollywood Park,” said Del Mar visitor Terry Fancher, president of the land company. “But [the industry] is on life support and it’s going to get worse unless something is done.”

Bay Meadows, which also owns a track in San Mateo, and other tracks feel that it’s imperative that they be allowed to run other forms of gambling, to better compete with Indian casinos.

“I’d say it’s pretty cut-and-dried at Hollywood,” Harper said. “They either get an alternate form of gambling, and remain as a track, or they become a shopping center.”

Harper was asked what would happen at Del Mar if Hollywood Park closed down.

“If we’re smart,” he said, “we all sit down and realistically assess what the Southern California racing circuit ought to be in the current economic climate. I’m not sure 300-plus days of racing a year is the answer anymore. As for Del Mar, a possibility is to stick a few more weeks on, but run a five-day racing schedule instead of the six we now have.”

The Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, which paid more than $12 million to lease the state fairgrounds for last year’s meet, has poured its profits back into the plant. A rebuilt grandstand, clubhouse and paddock costing $80 million were completed in 1993. The turf course, named after Jimmy Durante, a regular here after Bing Crosby and Pat O’Brien opened the track in 1937, has been upgraded with a type of Bermuda grass developed by golfer Greg Norman.

“We’ve got a lot of advantages,” Fravel said. “We’re only about 100 yards from the Pacific Ocean, and we’ve got a relatively new facility. Before our opening, every television station within a 100-mile radius advertised that we were back in business. But ultimately you’re only as good as what you put on the track. You can advertise and promote until the cows come home, but you can’t grow without the product. You need to keep running competitive races.”

Of the nine races run on opening day, four were decided by less than one length, but the statewide decline in horses has encroached on Del Mar, where 78 horses ran Wednesday, slightly less than a year ago. There was a six-horse field for one race, as there will be again Sunday, in the $250,000 San Diego Handicap. Del Mar’s signature race, the Pacific Classic, offers a $1-million purse, but has been troubled by small fields and drew only four horses two years ago.

Fravel remains upbeat.

“The doomsayers say that our game no longer appeals to the public, but I think they are wrong,” he said. “You can take a look at the success we had here on Wednesday and see that. No question that the product has declined, and while it sounds simplistic, it’s really all about money. The public interest is still there, but we have to keep trying to improve the economics of the game.”

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Cesario, the Japanese filly who scored a breathtaking win in the American Oaks at Hollywood Park, has an inflamed ligament in her right foreleg and will be sidelined an estimated three months.

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Devons Smokin, a ship-in from Northern California, was a 3 1/2 -length winner of Friday night’s $125,000 California Thoroughbred Breeders’ Assn. Stakes. Kalookan Lessie, the 3-5 favorite, was disqualified from second to fifth place after she and her jockey, Tony Farina, came out in the stretch, into the path of Bid Of Genius.... The only winning ticket on the pick six, sold at Philadelphia Park, was worth $515,224.