Zenyatta begins workouts at Del Mar

Zenyatta was shipped from her home at Hollywood Park to Del Mar in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and the likelihood remained that the unbeaten mare would take a shot at her third consecutive Clement Hirsch Stakes victory.

That Grade I $300,000 race is Saturday.

The only hesitation for the connections of the 17-0 Zenyatta, trainer John Shirreffs and owners Jerry and Ann Moss, is the synthetic surface at Del Mar. None of them like it, but then, they dislike synthetics in general, to varying degrees, at all of the Southern California tracks, even though it is where their star has made her fame and fortune. Of her 17 victories, 15 have been on California tracks.

“If she likes the track, we’ll go,” Shirreffs said earlier in the week.

Track observers said she looked fine and at home in her appearance on the Del Mar track Wednesday morning.

The closest call in all her 17 victories came in last year’s Clement Hirsch, when the late-closing Zenyatta cranked it up from way back and just got a nose in front at the end. Afterward, jockey Mike Smith, criticized for starting her closing run a little late, likened his ride for the final furlong to being an astronaut in a spaceship. Since then, Smith has said that Zenyatta did not like her workouts on the Del Mar surface last year.

The original plan that had Zenyatta going East to run on the dirt at Saratoga has now changed to a likely start Saturday in the Hirsch, followed by one more start, probably during the Oak Tree meeting at Santa Anita, followed by a grand-finale title defense of her Breeders’ Cup Classic. This year’s Breeders’ Cup is Nov. 5-6 at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky.

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Veteran jockey Tyler Baze, seriously injured in an accident near the starting gate at Del Mar on July 24, had surgery earlier this week to repair facial fractures and went home on Tuesday morning.

His agent, Vic Stauffer, said the surgery was successful, that Baze has recovered so well that he could be back in time for the Del Mar meeting’s highlight race, the Pacific Classic on Aug. 28, but that his most likely path of recovery will be to remain inactive until the opening of Oak Tree on Sept. 29.

“If Del Mar was a longer meeting,” Stauffer said, “he might try to get back earlier. But when Del Mar ends, he has three more weeks of rehabilitation during Fairplex, so we think that is the safest course.”

The Fairplex meeting follows Del Mar, runs for three weeks at the L.A. County Fair in Pomona, and is usually the time of year where top area jockeys take vacation.

In any case, Stauffer says that he and Baze are counting their blessings.

“He has been riding 10 years,” Staufer said, “and this is the first surgery of any kind he has had. If you are a jockey, something is going to happen. There is no avoiding it. It is just a matter of when and how bad it is going to be.”

Baze’s injury occurred when first-time starter Night Justice, a 2-year-old, threw his head back as he was about to be loaded into the gate. His head smashed into Baze’s face, causing facial and eye injuries.

The accident reminded some in racing of the starting-gate accident at Santa Anita that killed Mexican jockey Alvaro Pineda, a nationally acclaimed rider, in 1975. Pineda was already aboard his horse, Austin Mittler, and in the gate, when the horse reared and smashed Pineda in the head. Pineda died instantly.

From that, some theorize, came the introduction of padding around the braces in the starting gate. The stories of Pineda’s accident often include a reference to him being tossed against gate braces, which were then unpadded.

Not so, says Dan Smith, then publicity director of Santa Anita and now senior media coordinator at Del Mar. Smith speculates that the padding around the bracing in starting gates now was from an industry reaction, and probably a good one, to something that actually didn’t happen that day.

“I was there,” Smith said. “He never hit the bracing. He made two mistakes. When the horse acted up in the gate, Pineda got off. Then he turned his head. The horse threw his head back and struck Pineda’s head. A horse’s skull is pure hard bone.”

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Many area race fans had hoped for a longer-term solution to the one-year contract extension Oak Tree received from Santa Anita for this fall’s meeting. That, apparently, will not happen. Oak Tree recently signed a one-year-and-out deal and has turned its attention to getting a long-term agreement with Del Mar for 2011 and beyond.

bill.dwyre@latimes.com.