ARCADIA, Calif. - Friday morning at Santa Anita dawned cold enough to reduce a racetrack full of confused Southern Californians to conversations like . . .
"What's that?"
"I think it's my breath."
"You can see your breath?"
"You should feel my toes."
ARCADIA, Calif. - Opening day sells itself. The rest will be hard work.
This should come as no surprise, and it is the sober view of marketing VP Allen Gutterman, a 30-year veteran of the racing game who has found his latest home at Santa Anita Park. Not that considerable effort wasn't put forth in an attempt to make the opener a smash. It's just that, by comparison, the 83 racing days that follow figure to be ripe for a beating by stark economic forces.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Oscar winner and racehorse owner Joe Pesci, star of such feel-good family flicks as "Raging Bull" and "Goodfellas," spent part of last Thanksgiving weekend at Hollywood Park, where he presented the trophy for the Hollywood Derby, won by Court Vision for the partnership of IEAH Stables and the WinStar Farm of Bill Casner and Ken Troutt.
NEW YORK - Two deeply troubling incidents last week certified the bitter fact that racing not only has no immunity to economic downturns, but also that its institutions are susceptible to the kinds of full-blown meltdowns that leave customers fleeced and powerless.
What do you get for the sport that once had everything?
There are only a few shopping days left before Christmas - better known in the racing world as Santa Anita Eve - and frankly I'm stumped. Laboring under the idea that 'tis better to give than receive, this citizen of racing feels gratefully obligated to impart some meager words of wisdom, or at least comfort, to the good people of the Thoroughbred world.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - With its sponsored purse of $750,000, the CashCall Futurity on Saturday at Hollywood Park sticks out like a stakes oasis at the end of a long, arid march. It's a great race to have around, and a dozen young runners will try to win it. But don't be misled. Overnight purses on the Futurity program are nothing to brag about, as the daily purse structure in California - and elsewhere - continues to suffer from declines in handle, while forcing many blue-collar stables to look elsewhere for economic solutions.
Jerry Giesler, America's highest-paid attorney in the 1940s and 1950s, went to bat for Bugsy Siegel and Charlie Chaplin, lawyered Errol Flynn out of two statutory rape charges, represented Marilyn Monroe in her divorce of Joe DiMaggio, and got Lana Turner's daughter Cheryl Crane off light after she murdered the abusive two-bit gangster Johnny Stompanato.
Giesler was also chairman of the three-man California Horse Racing Board.
You've got to be crazy to run a maiden in a Grade 1 race, right? Grade 1 means only the best need apply. It's not for the faint of heart or weak in pedigree. "No riff-raff" reads the fine print on the entry slip.
Then along comes that happy day when a Grade 1 race seems to be just dangling out there, heavy fruit on a low branch, begging to be plucked by anyone passing by. Such is the temptation offered on Saturday in the Hollywood Starlet, a 1 1/16-mile main track event that bears not only that cherished Grade 1 honorific, but a share of a $429,000 purse to boot.
Of all the grim economic indicators bearing down on the Thoroughbred racing industry for 2009, the most troubling of all might be this one:
Hasili will not be having a foal.
This is roughly equivalent to a football season without a Super Bowl, or a Led Zeppelin concert without "Stairway to Heaven." Those not completely hip to the details of the Hasili Effect need only turn to last Saturday's Hollywood Turf Cup victory by Champs Elysees, which gave Hasili her fifth major U.S. stakes winner (Grade 1 for those who insist on the designation) in a row.