Beginning of Record Fall Meet Stakes Schedule
Bing Crosby Meet Making History Of Its Own
Benoit Photo
DMTC Stable Notes/Edited
DEL MAR, Calif.—One indication of the improving popularity of the Bing Crosby meet at Del Mar is this year’s lucrative, record-setting stakes schedule and the first of the 15 stakes races, the $75,000 Let It Ride Stakes, took place opening day. A field of nine 3-year-olds competed in the one mile turf test.
Trainer Graham Motion has sent out a string of four horses for the opening weekend. The East Coast-based trainer has made a habit of dabbling a bit at Del Mar over the past few years. One of his horses was scheduled to run in the Let It Ride. Script, a son of Algorithims, returned from an eight-month layoff and won an entry level allowance at Keeneland last out. He’s a horse Motion has always been very high on.
“I thought he had the potential to be a Derby-type horse,” Motion says. “He just didn’t pan out on the dirt and then he got sick in the spring with a low-grade pneumonia. So we gave him the whole summer off at Stone Farm, brought him back and it was so gratifying to see him run so well at Keeneland in that allowance race.”
He was ridden by jockey John Velazquez that day and by the veteran jockey again in the Friday feature. Velazquez, like his fellow New York-based rider, Flavien Prat, has moved his tack to Southern California for the fall and winter.
Trainer George Papaprodromou brought two to the party. Time to Party was claimed from the Peter Miller barn last month after winning a claiming allowance at Santa Anita at the same distance as the Let It Ride. Papaprodromou also ran Law Abiding, a son of Jimmy Creed, who stepped up into stakes company off of his maiden victory last out.
The Let It Ride Stakes was the seventh of eight races on the Friday opening day card. It’s named after the popular 1989 movie starring Richard Dreyfus that has become a favorite among horse players.
Bing Crosby Meet Making History Of Its Own
The idea of a fall meet at Del Mar evolved out of the closure of Hollywood Park back in 2013. The iconic track’s fall dates became available and were distributed to Del Mar and Los Alamitos. Del Mar’s first fall meet took place in 2014.
“I remember the first entry day,” Del Mar racing secretary, David Jerkens recollects. “It was quiet. I was a bit nervous wondering if this actually was going to work. But thanks to the support of the California racing industry it’s been, I think, one of the most positive meets in California.”
Some top horses have raced during the fall meet over the years. California Chrome got the ball rolling the first year when Art Sherman and company brought their Kentucky Derby winner for the Hollywood Derby. It was Chrome’s first and only race on the grass.
2015 Arlington Million winner, The Pizza Man, ran in the Hollywood Turf Cup that year and later in the meet Dortmund set a stakes record that still stands in the Native Diver. Trainer Graham Motion brought Ring Weekend and won the 2016 Seabiscuit, while Chad Brown won the 2018 Matriarch with his eventual Eclipse Award winner Uni. And who could forget the dazzling Got Stormy who shipped-in for Mark Casse and won the 2019 Matriarch.
COOLING OUT: The guard at the stable gate on the northeast side of the property has seen a steady flow of horse trailers over the past 24 hours as more horses arrive for the fall meet. Trainer Peter Miller shipped-in 14 horses Wednesday…Final preparations continue for Opening Day tomorrow. Gates open at 11 a.m., first post is at 12:30 p.m. Eight races are scheduled for the opener with nine set to go Saturday…The main track was open Thursday morning for training for the first time since Monday. There was only one official work recorded but several horses galloped and stretched their legs on the track which had been sealed for nearly 48 hours due to this week’s storm.
