Del Mar opens track to early-bird trainers, horses

DEL MAR, Calif. – The fair is gone, and now the carnival is about to begin.

Just one week before Del Mar’s summer racing season starts, and a little more than three days since the San Diego County Fair closed its deep fryers and vacated the track’s grounds, Del Mar’s racetrack opened for training Thursday, with the Vann Belvoir-trained pair of Ezio and Red N Black Attack the first to step onto the Polytrack surface shortly after 5 a.m.

Horses were allowed into the stable area Wednesday, and Thursday was the first day of training. A number of vans were pulling into the barn area as the morning unfolded, but several trainers already had shipped in all or most of their horses, including Belvoir, who has 35 runners here and is eager to get started.

“We should be rolling right away,” he said.

Belvoir said he likes to train at Del Mar for a full week in advance of the start of the race season because of the relative quiet.

“It’s nice out here,” he said while standing in the seven-furlong chute. “It’s like a training center. I like to get here, get them acclimated, get them settled in. This way, they can get over the track for a while before racing starts, get a breeze into them, and run them. You’re changing surfaces, so it’s nice to let them get used to it.”

ost of the horses who trained Thursday morning merely jogged, though a few galloped. Activity was light before the mid-morning renovation break, but as the stable area fills up over the next few days, mornings will become more frenetic.

That’s among the reasons Phil D’Amato, like Belvoir, got here early. D’Amato has taken over the barn of his mentor, Mike Mitchell, who always was among the first to arrive each summer. It certainly worked for Mitchell, who is the winningest trainer in Del Mar history and now is D’Amato’s assistant.

“This is my favorite part, being one of the first here,” said D’Amato, who has 42 horses here. “It’s like a mini-vacation for us trainers.”

Trainer Matt Chew was reacquainting himself with the Del Mar stable area. The son of a trainer, Chew first visited Del Mar three days after being born in 1953.

“It’ll get crowded soon enough,” said Chew, who will have 20 horses here. “It’s good to be here nice and early. You get dialed in and ready to go.”

Chew, based at Santa Anita the rest of the year, drove here Wednesday and helped get his barn in proper condition, which included some painting. Yet for a facility that bid adieu to the fair only Sunday night, the grounds were in remarkable shape.

“Look at what they did,” trainer Eddie Truman said while eyeballing the track from a backside platform. “It’s impossible.”