Members of the bridle party

A sprinkle of spectators is in the Santa Anita Park grandstand as the horses make their way to the racetrack.

Already, the animals have been on display at the saddling barn, while jockeys in their colorful silks linger in a clump until it is time to mount up. A small crowd gathers for a closer look at the horses before returning to the grandstand or the tonier Turf Club to place their bets. Even as they do, grooms lead horses from the barns in preparation for the next race.

On this recent day, the ritual of the track seems to transcend time. Indeed, the sight of the gleaming, elegant thoroughbreds recalls another era, harkening back to the days when Seabiscuit won the Santa Anita Handicap in 1940 with 70,000 people jammed into the grandstand and infield.

What’s changed in the last 60-plus years are the crowds -- average attendance is now 8,900 a day compared to 30,000 in the 1986-87 racing season; today bettors can wager on the ponies most anywhere, including the Internet, and then watch the race on cable TV. The same is true of racetracks nationwide, which has led to measures in other states that include adding slot machines to the racing experience.

But if you think counterintuitively, the smaller crowds become as much a part of the appeal as the prerace pageantry. The lines are short, the horses are among the best in the world, and the view isn’t bad either. With its majestic backdrop of the snow-covered San Gabriel Mountains, lush grounds and rich history, Santa Anita is widely considered one of the preeminent tracks in the country. Author Joe McGinniss, who has written extensively about horse racing, calls it “the best in the West.”

Of course, the track experience is not just about afternoon racing. For those willing to rise early, there is some public access to the flip side of racing -- a world of trainers, jockeys, exercise riders and grooms who start their days on Santa Anita’s backside. Their job is to care for and see to the exercise of the 1,800 horses at the track during racing season.

What they all have in common is a membership, one way or another, in the sport of kings and the work that goes with it. Many of them gather each morning for coffee at the trackside Clocker’s Corner cafe at the far end of the grandstand, and spectators willing to get up with the sun may very well experience what has not changed in racing -- the beauty of horses being put through their paces in the chill of the morning.

Santa ANITA opened in Arcadia on Christmas in 1934, during the height of the Depression.

Its founder, Charles Strub, believed Southern Californians would go to the races, if only to forget their troubles for a few hours. He was right. On opening day, a crowd of 30,777 streamed through the turnstiles.

Two years after Seabiscuit won the handicap, the track briefly became a holding area for Japanese American detainees before it was converted into an Army base for the duration of World War II. Racing began again in May 1945 with a 40-day summer meeting.

Hollywood celebrities -- Clark Gable and Will Rogers among them -- once made what was then the long drive to the races, then stayed overnight at places such as the storied Aztec Hotel in nearby Monrovia.

Santa Anita ranks, among other things, as the first track to have a $100,000 stakes race and the first $1-million handicap -- both the Santa Anita Handicap. And it was the spot where a woman jockey became the first to win a race at a major track. In 1984, it was the site of the arena equestrian events for the Summer Olympics.

Over the last five years, owner Magna Entertainment Corp. has spent $45 million to improve the park. On sunny weekend days, the infield is a place where parents have picnics while their children play. There’s no such thing as a bad seat, and $15 buys you entrance into the Turf Club, which is ritzy enough to have a dress code. For those who want to avoid fast food, there’s sit-down dining. The season runs Wednesdays through Sundays until April 18, with races beginning at 1 p.m. on weekdays and 12:30 weekends and holidays.

But the real work begins at 5 a.m., rain or shine. Trainers and grooms are up before dawn going about their work. The rhythm of the morning is constant motion, with jockeys and exercise riders already astride dozens of mounts even as the sun peeks over the mountains.

The backside of the track isn’t open to the public, but people can watch the morning workout program, which runs from 5 to 10, from the observation post at Clocker’s Corner.

On a recent day, Steve Wood, the track superintendent, sits in his usual glassed-in station above the cafe. The races are going to start in five hours and the heavy-machinery operators are working to prepare the sand and clay track, which is soggy from one of the rainiest seasons on record. Only the day before, a horse named Unusual Sunrise had been euthanized after he slipped and broke a leg.

Wood, who once aspired to be a jockey before he grew out of the possibility, oversees the grooming of 16 tracks around the world, 12 of them in California. Santa Anita, he says, “is the most competitive track in the world. On any given day there’s $50 million worth of horses out here.”

The obsession is mandatory for success. Mike Smith is a Hall of Fame jockey who also happened to be aboard Unusual Sunrise when the horse lost its footing and fell. He’s won millions in purses over the years and been injured dozens of times. Five years ago he broke his back in two places but came back to race once again. And he still gets up in the early morning to work horses.

He still does it because he wants to ride the best horses. So too do all the young jockeys hoping to make a name for themselves.

“You have to work really hard when you’re young,” Smith says. “But you still have to work hard when you’re at the top. Trainers want to know that you want to ride their horses.”

Jockeys are, in effect, freelancers. They work the horses at no cost because they want trainers to ask them to ride. So each morning, the parking lot is filled with their autos, many of them souped-up sports cars that are often purchased when they’re on a hot winning streak. Jockeys traditionally work for 10% of the purse, which means that only three riders in each race will earn any significant money, with their agents raking in 25% of the take. The rest are paid a consolation fee of $50 to $105, depending on the race.

“If you’re winning at 20% in this game, it’s big,” Smith says as other jockeys don their colors and head for the saddling barn.

Everyone at the track seems to have a discrete task. The exercise riders, who take out as many horses as possible, are generally paid $12 a horse and come from various backgrounds. Take the diminutive Kenny Sanchez, who was an all-star wrestler at San Gabriel Valley High School before gravitating to the track. At 41, he’s been a jockey and exercise rider for 23 years.

After high school, he found himself hanging around Clocker’s Corner, then got a job on the backside walking horses.

“It took a long time to move up,” he said. “It took years to move up.”

Or consider Twei and Tim Reavey, one of the few husband-wife exercise teams at Santa Anita. He is from Britain and comes from a family of trainers. She is the daughter of a diplomat and has a sister, an exercise rider herself once, who broke her back in a 1992 fall and has used a wheelchair ever since. Both Reaveys say they are always conscious of the danger but relish the life of the track, with its close-knit community.

“Most people out here are a lot older than they look,” Tim Reavey says. “We’re getting paid to do what we love. Not many people can say that.”

A few minutes before 9 one morning, trainer John Dolan is sitting at a Clocker’s Corner table with friend and fellow trainer Pete Levine.

Dolan is somewhere in the middle of the pecking order of trainers, with 10 horses in his stable and a dozen 2-year-olds that he is bringing along slowly on a California horse farm. He started in the business as a hot walker -- someone who walks a horse after a run to cool it down -- and 23 years later, he’s still here. But he doesn’t allow his children around the track because he understands the lure.

“Once you’re in, you’re trapped,” he says. “And the toughest part about this business is that it’s seven days a week, 365 days a year.”

Mark Schlesinger owns horses. He owns them all over the country, some in partnership with former Dodger catcher Paul Lo Duca. But the Pasadena travel business owner says Santa Anita is his favorite track in the country.

Schlesinger bought his first horse when he was in college, using a $12,000 education loan to finance the purchase.

He said that just taking care of several horses at Santa Anita can cost as much as $5,000 a month, a figure not for the faint-hearted, and that workers’ compensation costs keep driving the prices higher in California. “It costs a third to have a horse in Arkansas than it does here,” Schlesinger says. “It’s very expensive.”

Still, he points to the thrill of the race, the camaraderie of the track and the setting that offsets the expense, though he says the wins don’t come all that often.

“Most people lose,” he says. “You can go days at a time without cashing in a ticket.”

Hope is what fills the space between races. It is what keeps people in the racing business when good sense argues against it. Earlier this season, trainer Ted West’s source of hope was a horse named Kirkendahl that had been winning races. A victory the next Saturday would mean entering the horse -- a 3-year-old sprinter owned by country singer Toby Keith -- in the Kentucky Derby.

West is the second of three generations of trainers stretching back to well before those heady Seabiscuit days, to a time when race lovers drove to Tijuana to see the horses run. He describes Kirkendahl in human athletic terms. It was a shame, West says, that more people couldn’t see him run.

“To me, they’re comparable to an NBA player -- agile, quick, competitive -- all the things we look for in a good athlete,” he says. “If we could get more people to watch them run, they couldn’t deny how great horses are.”

That Saturday, Kirkendahl entered the gates at a prohibitive 19-to-10 favorite in a field of five in the $150,000 San Rafael Stakes. At the bell, Spanish Chestnut took the early lead. Kirkendahl was game, though, and held second through the backstretch and into the final turn. But as the horses reached the homestretch, Kirkendahl was dead last. And that’s how he finished.

When the race was over, a groom quickly unsaddled Kirkendahl and led him down the track to the backside, where he was cooled, washed, brushed down and led to his stall. He would race again.

And West, Dolan, the Reaveys and all the others would again be on the backside the next morning, before dawn.

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Santa Anita

Where: 285 W. Huntington Drive, Arcadia

When: Wednesdays through Sundays and April 18. Ends April 18. Clockers’ Corner, 5 to 10 a.m. (Free parking through Gate 8 on Baldwin Avenue.) Gates open 10:30 a.m. First race, 1 p.m. weekdays, 12:30 p.m. weekends.

Price: $5, general; $8.50, clubhouse; $15, turf club. Children younger than 17 with parent or guardian admitted free. Parking: $4, general; $6, preferred; $10, valet and limousine.

Info: (626) 574-7223; www.santaanita.com