If you missed a more rewarding appreciation of Del Mar Oaks winner Personal Diary in her two appearances out West this summer, it’s too late. She’s gone, or at least she was getting wrapped up and ready to ship Tuesday morning along with five other horses trained by the wife-and-husband team of Victoria and Phil Oliver.

Personal Diary, runaway winner of last weekend’s Del Mar Oaks, is one of those overnight success stories who had been flying just beneath the radar, working hard in the trenches, just waiting for that moment to shine.

Steve “Snapper” Mick was one of those reliable trainers whom players at Penn National and then Parx could always count on. His horses would be well cared for and well managed. They would run where they could win. For nearly a quarter-century, Mick, first at Penn, near his native Harrisburg, Pa., and then at Parx, near Philadelphia, could be counted on to win between 30 and 40 races per year and at a 20 percent clip, some years higher.

Then, the trainer went 2 for 89 in 2009, 2 for 50 in 2011, 3 for 31 in 2012 and 4 for 26 in 2013.

The recent opinion piece by Andrew Beyer on low-takeout pick fives makes you think: How about letting racetracks control the most important part of their business, the wagering?   

Even within the confines of simulcasting agreements and government-mandated takeout percentages, they should be allowed to vary takeout, just like a store would run a sale for a given day. Or how about a specific race? How about the New York Racing Association offering “no NYRA trifecta takeout Thursdays?”

In a world suddenly without Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall, reeling from violent strife at home and abroad, it would be swell to think all that grim karma could lighten up, reach down, and give the Pete Eurton stable a little nudge in the Rancho Bernardo on Sunday.

Imagine spending a quarter of a century living in the shadow of a dominating companion who sucks all the air out of the room and rarely let’s you get a word in edgewise. Okay, so maybe it’s not that hard to imagine.

Since 1987, the Beverly D. Stakes has been the silent, stately partner of the Arlington Million, offered on the same enticing program that will be presented once again at Arlington Park on Saturday. Their offspring – the Secretariat Stakes and the American St. Leger – complete the family portrait.

Some of the most interesting remarks made at last Sunday’s Jockey Club Round Table on Matters Pertaining to Racing were on a topic sometimes overlooked at such industry gatherings: Matters actually pertaining to actual racing.

Martin Panza, nearly a year into his new position as the senior vice president of racing operations for the New York Racing Association, has already made a series of welcome changes to the game in New York – not in the frequently overemphasized areas of marketing or medication, but in the nuts and bolts of the racing product.

“Of course I can pronounce it,” said Richard Mandella, insulted by any suggestion otherwise. “ ‘MOO-lawn day MOO-jawn.’ At least that’s how the French guy said it.”

We’ll give Mandella a point for the effort and figure it doesn’t matter what he calls the 4-year-old daughter of Curlin around the barn as long as she gets fed, watered, and Hall of Fame-trained enough to keep winning races like the $250,000 John C. Mabee Stakes last Sunday at Del Mar.

Did anybody catch that ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken last Friday that essentially said that the NCAA’s amateurism model was exactly what any rational observer always knew it was – a price-fixing sham designed to line the pockets of top NCAA officials and some universities and make sure men’s college basketball and football players get none of the billions its sports generate?

In the first decade of the 2000s, Scott Lake trained the winners of 4,130 races. His stable won 417 races in 2005, 528 in 2006, 485 in 2007, and 421 in 2008, when he had a peak of 287 horses at seven tracks, with 30 more horses on the farm. One year, Lake drove 100,000 miles in three different vehicles.

It was really quite insane.

“I just grew into that,” Lake said. “The phone would ring at 4:30 in the morning; you’d start making the training chart. It would take an hour and a half to do all the training charts.”

DEL MAR, Calif. – On the day that Del Mar opened its summer racing season, fans at the seaside track and horseplayers around the country were immediately betting with gusto. The wager known as the Player’s Pick Five, comprising the first five races on the card, attracted a stunning $620,426 in wagers, more than double the size of almost every exacta pool and triple the amount on the pick six, a California institution.