Lava Man tries to get back in flow on the turf

The annually celebrated Del Mar horse race meeting, the 69th edition of Southern California’s turf meeting the surf, is off to a grand start, with more to come today.

The Grade I Eddie Read Handicap, a $400,000 race, will put the legendary 7-year-old Lava Man back in the public eye. With any success, the gelding will use this 1 1/8 -mile turf race as a springboard to a turf race in the Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita in October.

“That’s what we are looking at, the turf angle,” said Doug O’Neill, Lava Man’s trainer. “I talked to the owners and that’s the focus.”

Lava Man was entered in this year’s Hollywood Gold Cup, Hollywood Park’s prestigious summer-meeting race that he had won the previous three years.

But when he was withdrawn days before the race, that seemed to end any talk of Lava Man’s taking another shot at the big race, the $5-million Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Tyler Baze will ride Lava Man today and is expected to be near the front at the finish with Spring House (Garrett Gomez riding) and Storm Military (David Flores up).

“Lava Man is training great, doing fantastic,” O’Neill said. “I think we have a good opportunity here, that we have him back on the beam.”

Lava Man has failed to win in his last five outings, after dominating the recent Southern California classics for older horses.

He won the Santa Anita Handicap in 2006 and ‘07, the Hollywood Gold Cup in ‘05, ’06 and ’07 and Del Mar’s Pacific Classic in ’06.

Del Mar’s 43-day meeting began with a record-setting opener Wednesday. The attendance of 43,559 was a record for opening day and second only to the 1996 Pacific Classic day, when all-time leading money winner Cigar, trying to win a record 17th straight race, was upset with a superb ride by veteran Alex Solis on Dare And Go. The crowd that day was 44,181.

This year’s Pacific Classic, which will highlight a meeting with 31 major stakes races worth $7.35 million of the overall Del Mar purse of $25 million, will be Aug. 24.

The meeting will end Sept. 3, with the running of the $250,000 Del Mar Futurity.

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bill.dwyre@latimes.com