It is difficult to convey the high esteem in which the San Juan Capistrano Handicap was once held. Might as well wax rhapsodic over the Rainbow Room, and wonder if it ever will be churning out those New York memories again.
There was a reason that Johnny Longden, who’d won more races than jockey in history, chose the 1966 San Juan Capistrano to be his final ride.
Depending on your artistic tastes and generational inclinations, the term Last of the Independents brings to mind either the Pretenders 1994 album that included a pitch-perfect cover of Dylan’s “Forever Young,” or a bank heist movie called “Charlie Varrick” in which Walter Matthau’s main character referred to himself by that hook.
Then there’s Ron Crockett.
On the face of it, the signals coming from Oaklawn Park were decidedly mixed. Tradition, a hallowed concept in Hot Springs, was looking like a slippery proposition.
An appearance by Horse of the Year Havre de Grace apparently was squandered for want of a single, solitary pound’s worth of compromise in the assignment of weights for Friday’s Apple Blossom Handicap. The champ got 123, six more than last year’s Kentucky Oaks winner Plum Pretty, and that was that. Havre de Grace’s people passed, and the integrity of the handicap system was preserved in all its archaic splendor.
It is not necessary to be in the Hall of Fame, or at least well on your way, for a trainer or jockey to win the Santa Anita Derby. It only seems like it.
In the 50 runnings of the Santa Anita Derby since Hall of Famer W.J. “Buddy” Hirsch saddled Royal Attack to beat Admiral’s Voyage in the 1962 running of the event, 36 Santa Anita Derbies have been won by a Hall of Fame jockey, while 19 versions were taken by Hall of Fame trainers, including six by Bob Baffert and four by D. Wayne Lukas.
Whoever wins Saturday’s Santa Anita Derby and Wood Memorial will immediately join the ranks of favorites for the Kentucky Derby on May 5, if they aren’t there already. They will also, however, be joining a list of horses that for two decades now has amassed an astounding record of disappointment and defeat at Churchill Downs.
Whether or not Saturday’s 76th running of the Santa Anita Derby produces a winner worth talking about years from now remains to be seen. For $750,000 it should at least be a good show, featuring such ambitious young runners as Creative Cause, Liaison, Midnight Transfer, and I’ll Have Another.
The bar, though, has been set pretty high as history goes. Here are five Santa Anita Derbies among the 75 run that still reverberate to this day:
There is no horse racing allowed in New York this Sunday, which is Palm Sunday in the Christian world, because of laws dating back to 1695.
No, really. It’s not an April Fool’s gag. The law reads, in the original: “Be it therefore enacted that there shall be no traveling, servile laboring and working, shooting, fishing, sporting, playing, horse racing, hunting, or frequenting of tippling houses, or the use of any other unlawful exercises or pastimes, by any of the inhabitants or sojourners within this province, or by any of their slaves or servants, on the Lord’s day.”
