It’s Win, Place and No-Show

The sport of horse racing, which has seemed rumpled and stained for years, will dress up in its Sunday best tomorrow. It will be time for sport coats, summer dresses and the Pacific Classic at Del Mar, the $1-million race that is grandiose in both purse size and location.

For 69 years, since singer Bing Crosby and actor Pat O’Brien borrowed on their life insurance policies to open a racetrack about 20 miles north of San Diego, Del Mar has been sort of a West Coast Woodstock for the wealthy and wide-eyed. Its motto, the one it began with, is one of the most recognizable in sports: Where the surf meets the turf. No big ad agency needed here.

Del Mar opened its season on a Wednesday, July 19. The crowd was 42,005, the second-largest ever here behind the Pacific Classic Day in 1996, when 44,186 showed up to see if Cigar could break the legendary Citation’s 16-race win streak.

He couldn’t. Dare And Go, ridden by Alex Solis, won.

And there was Solis, on opening day, 10 years later, the star of the show again, winning three times, including both divisions of the featured Oceanside Stakes.

“You get a crowd like today,” Solis said, “and it really gets your heart pumping.”

It was wild, festive, a throwback to the days when horse racing’s big days had a Super Bowl feel and the track, any major track, was the place to be. By 11 a.m., three hours before post time, the grounds were buzzing. By 1, they had become a human logjam, and by race time, they had become a leading spot on the planet for Brooks Brothers shirts, little black dresses and daytime cleavage.

The sights were not lost on Joe Harper, the 63-year-old grandson of Cecil B. DeMille, who has been the chief executive of the Del Mar racetrack since 1978.

“I go to the Academy Awards every year,” Harper said, “and our opening day is better.”

But racing cannot subsist alone on Del Mar and on a similar highly successful meeting each year at Saratoga in upstate New York. Nor can it seem to translate its Triple Crown of the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont, plus its annual one day of million dollar-plus purses called the Breeders’ Cup, into the robust industry it once was before other pro sports, the Internet and cable television made trips through traffic to the betting windows a much lower priority.

Now, outside of Del Mar and isolated special events, racing has gone from a playground of the rich and famous, and a fantasyland for sports fans in general, to a bunch of tracks where small groups of the regulars hang around TV sets and often never even see a live horse.

Race meetings are too long, attendance too low and tracks too dependent on revenue from bets placed several time zones away.

Racing has splintered its audience, watched it grow old and only recently started to appeal to younger fans through home computer betting. That, of course, doesn’t directly affect the huge blocks of empty seats.

Nor can racing easily absorb the effects of a high-profile, negative incident such as Barbaro’s breakdown at the Preakness in May, especially when it is followed by the deaths of 13 horses to date at Del Mar.

Barbaro had emerged from a large field to win the Kentucky Derby by 6 1/2 lengths. Barbaro seemed strong, dominant, well-prepared. The public, which actually cares about horse racing in large numbers at Kentucky Derby time, seemed captivated. It seemed to think the horse had a real chance at winning what had not been won since 1978, and what racing has been holding out as a carrot for a new popularity surge ever since.

But Barbaro never got close to a Triple Crown, never got more than 200 yards down the main straightaway at Pimlico on Preakness day before stepping wrong and shattering several bones in his right hind leg. As 118,402 people watched at the track in Baltimore, and millions more watched on network TV, the horse was stabilized, put in a van and shipped off to a veterinary hospital in Philadelphia, where he would undergo several surgeries, while doctors cautioned that his chances of survival were not good.

A total of $87.5 million was bet on that Preakness race, much of it on Barbaro, and for those more financially than emotionally connected to the horse, racing had left a bad taste in their mouths.

“Experiences like that don’t bring people back,” said Jack Liebau, president of Hollywood Park. “I have been surprised how Barbaro captured people’s imagination.”

The impact on people of his breakdown was immense, he said. “If they were there, many of them just walked out. If they were watching on TV, they just stopped.”

Barbaro jockey Edgar Prado, who stayed with the horse as best he could until medical personnel arrived, was inconsolable afterward. Solis, riding Brother Derek and right next to Barbaro when the bones broke, mourned the loss of a horse that wasn’t even his by hugging his wife afterward and crying. Brother Derek’s trainer, Dan Hendricks, said that once he saw Barbaro break down, he had no interest in where Brother Derek or any other horse finished in the race.

Nor did the public care much after that, either. With no Triple Crown on the line, television ratings for the third leg at Belmont Park in New York three weeks later were low, as was on-site attendance.

Overall, horse deaths in racing are way up, leaving experts puzzled as to whether poor track conditions, overwork or medications may be to blame. There were 154 racing fatalities during the 2004-05 season in California, an increase of 50% in a two-year period, according to the racing board. Including training, there were 320 deaths last season.

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As recently as 15 years ago, you had to go to the track to bet. But then racing, looking to grow revenue, expanded off-track betting. It didn’t take long for the off-track betting opportunities to grow and crowds at Santa Anita in Arcadia and Hollywood Park in Inglewood to shrink.

Mike Mooney, director of public relations at Hollywood Park, said, “You could see it almost immediately.”

Hollywood Park began to echo with memories rather than making new ones. Greer Garson used to sit alongside Jimmy Stewart in the Directors’ Room, and Walter Matthau would tell anybody who cared to listen how he had to make $3 million a year, a third for the government, a third for his ex-wife and a third for his horse-racing habit. Linda Evans was there, Eva Gabor, Phyllis Diller, John Forsythe, so many more. Marje Everett, 85, who owned and ran the track from 1970 to 1990, still follows the racing scene closely. She remembers fondly the past and bemoans the trends of the future.

“I remember Cary Grant, coming to see me and wanting to make sure things were going all right,” she said. “He’d say, let’s go, and he’d take my hand and we’d walk all around the place, making sure people would see him. He’d stop and talk to them. You can just imagine what that did to an afternoon crowd.”

Everett said that weekend crowds would almost always be in the 30,000 range back then.

“Now, I see in the paper crowds of 3,000,” she said. “We had more employees than that.”

Hollywood Park is now owned by Bay Meadows Land Co., and run by Liebau. Bay Meadows bought it from the owners of Churchill Downs in September 2005, and said that, were the financial picture not improved, the track would be torn down in three years and the land used for condos.

Liebau, who said in a recent interview that “at some point, land gets so valuable that it has a higher or better use,” also said that the three-year time frame is not set in stone.

“Take a look at history,” he said. “Our plan was to consolidate operations at Golden Gate Fields and Bay Meadows [Bay Area tracks] and 1992 was going to be the last year of operation for Bay Meadows. Well, it’s still going.”

Liebau also pointed out that Hollywood Park is about to spend $8 million to $10 million on a new synthetic track, which will presumably be safer, and a new chute for its Lakeside turf course.

“The company wants us to operate as if we will be here, racing, forever,” Liebau said, “and that’s what we are doing.”

Still, the appearance of the first wrecking ball at Hollywood Park will not be a huge shock, when and if that happens. The on-site betting numbers were up slightly at its recently completed meeting, as were the average number of horses starting each race, up from 7.2 to 8.1, an important statistic for horsemen.

But Liebau is a realist. When his biggest day, the Hollywood Gold Cup -- which also included the graded Swaps Stakes -- drew only 8,300 and had a total of nine horses starting in the two races, he knew those numbers wouldn’t keep tracks open for long.

He also is a realist in the discussion of the prospects of getting slot machines at California tracks to bail them out. That has happened in many states. Slots generate the additional revenue needed for tracks to increase purses, which quickly increases the size of starting fields.

“We had Proposition 68 [to get slots] in 2004,” he said, “and that failed badly [83% to 16%]. At one point, we had a virtual monopoly on gaming in California. But then the lottery came in, followed by Indian casinos. I think Sacramento truly wants to help us. They know that we employ around 60,000 people in the state. But we all just haven’t figured out a way to get it done.”

On that issue, Liebau is in agreement with a man he once worked for, Frank Stronach, the Canadian industrialist whose Magna International owns, among other tracks, Santa Anita.

In an interview in May at Pimlico, which he also owns, Stronach said he bought into racetracks because he loves racing and he thought they could be run better.

He also said that relying on slot machines as the savior is not the only answer, that the racing industry needs help from government in the form of easing rules and regulations.

His publicly stated wish to sink between $200 million and $400 million into the area around Santa Anita for hotels, restaurants, a mall and entertainment complex, and to do so by 2002, hasn’t gotten past permits and politicians yet.

Stronach bought Santa Anita for $126 million in 1998 and came on the scene with a bravado uncharacteristic in the sport. In a TV interview shortly after the purchase, he was asked what he might change.

“The mountains will stay,” he said.

He has, indeed, spent money improving Santa Anita, and the combination of its appealing location against the San Gabriel Mountains and last winter’s meeting, which produced a 15.1% attendance increase and an 11% on-track wagering jump, bodes well.

Those numbers, however, build on a terrible 2005 season, with constant rain disrupting programs and dampening spirits.

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Sunday at Del Mar, when the horses leave the starting gate for the Pacific Classic, uncertainty about the future of the sport won’t be on many minds. This is an oasis in a desert of doubt.

“To begin with, we were handed a gift,” Del Mar President Harper said, looking out at the swaying palm trees and nearby ocean. “Years ago, we wrestled with the question of whether we should be a little county fair, or Saratoga.”

The decision made is obvious.

Harper said that part of Del Mar’s marketing is to sell the nostalgia of the place.

The first race at the track was won by High Stakes on July 3, 1937. It was owned by Bing Crosby, of course. One of the most popular restaurants is O’Brien’s, and that’s not named after any old O’Brien, but actor Pat himself, who is pictured in the entranceway alongside generals and dignitaries.

The turf track is named after Jimmy Durante, and one of the better handicappers to bless the place is honored in a photo display and story in a prominent staircase. Her name was Betty Grable.

To keep the buzz going, Del Mar holds Friday night concerts for the age 25-40 set, and has launched some new traditions, such as the silly-hat contest on opening day. Kathy Robinson of Kent City, Mich., arrived at Del Mar that day no different from the jockeys and horses. She was ready to compete and win.

There were four categories in the hat contest, and she correctly entered the most-outrageous division. Her hat extended from her head in a 2-foot circle and was made of wild turkey feathers.

On top was a furry doll horse. Where do you buy wild turkey feathers, she was asked.

“Didn’t buy ‘em,” she said. “Shot the turkeys myself, then took off the feathers.”

Even though she lost out on a free trip to next year’s Kentucky Derby, Robinson was delighted with her Del Mar experience.

“I love it here,” she said.

So, figuratively, does all of horse racing, which knows that, even in the worst of times, when the surf is meeting the turf and the only downside of being at Del Mar is sea gull droppings on your car window, the sport is getting at least six weeks of great reviews.

“We want all of horse racing to grow, do well,” Harper said. “In the long run, we are only as good as that.

“I do not want to be the last guy, turning out the light.”