Meet the Porter Ranch super fan attending his 42nd consecutive Breeders’ Cup
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- A Porter Ranch man has attended 42 straight Breeders’ Cups since 1984.
- He defied COVID to attend the 2020 races at Keeneland, while a 2009 Zenyatta victory helped restore his fractured relationship with his daughter.
DEL MAR — The difference between an obsession and a hobby is often determined by how you choose to view it. There are many factors, most of all the lengths to which you will go to satisfy your desire to do something about it.
In 1984, John Wawee, then a student at USC, was reading The Times and ran across an article about this new event to be held at Hollywood Park where the best horses in the country were coming to Southern California to race for a lot of money. It was one day and only seven races.
Wawee, who just had a friend teach him how to read the Racing Form, was intrigued. But there was a problem. It was the same day that No. 14 USC was playing No. 1 Washington with a Rose Bowl berth in the offing.
“I had to make a decision as a USC student and I decided to pass on the USC game,” said Wawee, 61, who lives in Porter Ranch. “I went to the Breeders’ Cup and I had a little Sony Watchman, so I was watching the USC game in the box I had at the Breeders’ Cup. It was worth it. USC won and I went to an unbelievable event.”
Fast forward 41 years to this Friday and Saturday at Del Mar and Wawee will be there, both as a fan — short for fanatic — and a microshare owner of Distaff favorite Seismic Beauty, attending his 42nd consecutive Breeders’ Cup. He’s been to 12 different tracks, two countries and defied the odds of attending a no public spectators event at Keeneland in 2020 because of COVID. His streak has outlasted two racetracks, Hollywood Park and Arlington Park, two total rebuilds, Gulfstream Park and Belmont Park, and rising prices that mostly exclude the casual fan.
“Now it’s just part of my life, a great part of my life,” Wawee said. “I’m never going to miss it. I’ll be at every one no matter what, even though they continue to raise the prices like crazy. That’s money I’m going to spend for those two days.”
Wawee says when people learn of his streak, they mostly ask about 2020 at Keeneland.
“That year, it truly was a mission,” said Wawee, who is a partner in the Castle Batting Cages complex in Sherman Oaks. “My business was shut down because of COVID. I was very depressed. Financially depressed and emotionally depressed. My hopes of going to the Breeders’ Cup were pretty low and I just started calling and emailing everyone I could think of. People at the Breeders’ Cup. I offered to be a volunteer. People who worked for NBC, people who worked for [horse racing television channel] TVG. I told them I would carry their coffee every day. I had to be there. That was the year it was really a mission. It was just part of my life.”
Wawee was able to get entry through a friend of a friend who had a horse farm in Kentucky. There was added incentive because he owned a microshare in the horse Authentic through MyRacehorse, a group that sells the experience of owning a race horse for amounts as low as $100. It couldn’t have worked out better, Authentic won the Classic, the most important race on the card.
“I shouldn’t say this, but I actually snuck into the winner’s circle photo,” he said.
Besides Authentic’s win in the Classic, his favorite race was in was in 1989 in the Classic at Gulfstream. It was California-based Sunday Silence, winner of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, against New York-based Easy Goer, winner of the Belmont Stakes. Sunday Silence won the race by a neck, the third time in four races he beat Easy Goer.
“That was just amazing,” Wawee said. “Getting caught up in that L.A. versus New York kind of thing. That was our L.A. horse and we had to beat those guys from New York, who said their horse was the greatest of all time.
“I wanted Sunday Silence to beat him so badly, especially after losing the Belmont.”
While there have been many memorable races, a lot of people recall in 2009 at Santa Anita when Zenyatta became the first female horse to win the Classic, going from last to first.
“Zenyatta was unbelievable, he said. “The grandstand shook that day. I was high up in the grandstand and it felt like there was an earthquake. I probably would have ranked Zenyatta ahead of Sunday Silence if I thought she was going to win. I went there thinking there was no way she could beat the boys. It was just more of a shock than anything.”
It’s said that sports and natural disasters are the two things that can bring people together. Enter Zenyatta.
“I have two daughters, my oldest one, Jaclyn, and I were really tight when she was growing up,” Wawee said warning in advance that he might start crying retelling this story. “When she was in her teenage years we started to drift apart, which I think is pretty normal for any father-daughter relationship. We were battling over things.
“After Zenyatta won the Classic, they retired her for about a month. But then she unretired and they were pointing for a race at Santa Anita [the Santa Margarita] in March. So, I started telling my daughter about Zenyatta, how special she is. She asked me if I was going to go to her race. I said ‘Yeah, do you want to go?’ And she said ‘Yeah, I’ll go with you.’ I knew a day with just the two of us might be a little much because we’ve been battling so much. So, I asked her if she wanted to bring some friends. Her friends came and we went to the Santa Anita race and Zenyatta won, of course.
“Jaclyn thought that was so great. She just had a great time. Her friends did too. But after that she was constantly asking me ‘When is Zenyatta going to run again? What’s she doing? When’s she going to work out?’ Now, we were connected again because of Zenyatta. I firmly believe our relationship got back together, back being tight, because of Zenyatta.”
Wawee has some advice for those who run the Breeders’ Cup. He thinks it should only be held at Del Mar and Keeneland, alternating years.
He’s also not a fan of the format where all the Friday races are for 2-year-olds and the Distaff (for only female horses) has moved to Saturday.
“I don’t mind it as a two-day event, but I liked it better when the Distaff was the star of Friday and it wasn’t all 2-year-olds on Friday. When we had that Beholder-Songbird long stretch battle [at Santa Anita in 2016], that was fantastic. There have been so many great Distaffs, even last year when Thorpedo Anna won it pretty easily. They are superstars and they deserve their day in the spotlight. If Seismic Beauty wins this year, I’ll be saying the same thing.”
Former major leaguer Jayson Werth has become a major player in the world of horse racing through Icon Racing, a horse racing syndicate he formed.
Wawee says he doesn’t bet that much any more, instead using the money to buy microshares from MyRacehorse, of which he has about 15.
“I never bet on my horses, so it’s really not that much of a thing anymore,” he said. “I’ve tried to explain to people that you can’t bet enough money to have the feeling you have when your horse wins, a horse that I own a share of. There is no amount of money I can bet to have that same feeling, so I just don’t bet.”
Wawee wouldn’t disclose how much his hobby has cost him through the years.
“I think ever since 2007, it has gotten so very expensive to go the Breeders’ Cup,” he said. “So, you can understand why I stopped betting.”
