The view from a shaded bench in the paddock gardens at Santa Anita last Saturday afternoon was enough to set the memories whirling. Blame it on Laffit Pincay Jr., winner of five Santa Anita Handicaps, who could be found posing for pictures with star-struck fans near a Mt. Rushmore of bronze busts, including the one of Pincay by Nina Kaiser arrayed alongside those of three-time Handicap winner Chris McCarron, four-time winner John Longden, and Bill Shoemaker, who won Santa Anita’s most famous race a ridiculous nine times between 1954 and 1985. Many of those Handicaps seemed impossible to top. There was the McCarron-Shoemaker duel aboard Alysheba and Ferdinand in the 1988 Handicap, the Shoemaker-Pincay battle between John Henry and Perrault in 1982, and the Shoemaker-Pincay 1-2 finish in 1971 with powerhouse stablemates Ack Ack and Cougar II. Stir in a number of similarly incandescent thrillers: Stardust Mel and Out of the East clinched and staggering like exhausted boxers in the mud of 1975. Pincay and Greinton in a panic to catch the surprising Herat, 157-1, in 1986. Best Pal and McCarron in one gallant last hurrah, beaten by a Gary Stevens masterpiece aboard Urgent Request in 1995. It is always unreasonable to expect a great race to live up to its lofty reputation, especially in these dour times of lowered expectations. In one sobering sense, fans could count themselves lucky that there was an 82nd running of the Santa Anita Handicap at all, given the lost days of racing from the reaction to the rash of equine fatalities earlier in the meet. But there it was, in all its faded glory, billed on Saturday as part of the Santa Anita Derby undercard – Elvis opening for Adam Levine. Television timing placed the derby first, and it was business as usual, with colts trained by Bob Baffert finishing first and second in a dress rehearsal for Kentucky. Then, with the stage cleared and the children put to bed, it was time for the grown-ups to show off. And what a show it was. Gift Box, a late-blooming 6-year-old by Twirling Candy, won a battle of wills against the odds-on McKinzie that could have gone either way and did not deserve a loser. The official difference of a nose at the end of the mile and one-quarter places the 2019 Handicap in the same historical context as the margin that separated Broad Brush and Ferdinand in 1987, Crystal Water and Faliraki in 1977, Cougar II and Kennedy Road in 1973, and both of Seabiscuit’s losses – to Rosemont in 1937 and Stagehand in 1938. Nice company. There was no denying, however, that the mainstream-media backdrop for the 2019 Santa Anita Handicap forever will be part of the story. Demands for drastic changes in whip rules and medication policies – neither of which were connected to the 23 fatalities at the meet – monopolized the pre-race coverage. The 30,000 or so patrons arrived already saturated by stories that suggested a bleak future for racing, confirmed by protesters at the parking lot entrance shouting, “Shame!” Even the Handicap itself offered a conflicting message. As the two runners came together in the stretch, neither giving an inch, Mike Smith kept his whip turned down at McKinzie’s neck, while Joel Rosario, on Gift Box, pulled his stick through to give his horse two whacks left-handed as the finish loomed. To these tired eyes, Gift Box did not appear to respond in any significant way to Rosario’s whip, while McKinzie, at the same time, seemed to be giving Smith every ounce of effort under the rider’s rhythmic hand ride. It was only when Rosario put the whip away and put his powerful shoulders to work that the gray horse found just enough of an edge. John Sadler, who trained Twirling Candy, said there is no way of knowing if the whip made the difference in the narrow margin. Anyway, proving negatives is an empty exercise. “What I do know is that there is no stronger rider than Joel,” Sadler said later. “He can make a difference in a race, just as Pincay could make a difference in hand-riding alone.” On the morning after the Handicap, Sadler took Kosta Hronis to the paddock gardens for a brief history lesson. The day before they had become the first owner-trainer combination to win consecutive runnings of the Santa Anita Handicap with two different horses since 1940, when Charles Howard and Tom Smith followed their win with Kayak II in 1939 with the last, triumphant chapter in the saga of Seabiscuit. “I showed Kosta where the names of the Santa Anita Handicap winners are engraved in the stone around the fountain,” Sadler said. “They ran out of room a long time ago, but there, behind the John Henry statue, were the two Charles Howard horses. “The race has been a big part of my life for a long time,” added Sadler, a native Californian. “My first one was in 1970 with Quicken Tree, who came from 20 lengths last to win for Lou Rowan, who was so important to the sport. “Winning last year with Accelerate was a high point of my career,” Sadler said. “And winning this year with Gift Box is every bit as exciting. He a gorgeous horse. We hope to be able to show him off to a lot of fans in the months to come.”