More often than not, a conversation with Jack Van Berg would take place with him on one of his big, strapping ponies and you on the ground, paying close heed. The thing is, Jack never talked down to you, but you always looked up to him.
Van Berg did more with horses in his 81 years than can be sensibly measured. He bred them, foaled them, raised and broke them, then conditioned and raced them to be the best they were intended to be.
The suits were roaming Santa Anita Park in force on opening day, counting noses, checking the tote, fingering company-issued worry beads. You couldn’t turn around without bumping into one of Tim Ritvo’s highly motivated executive team, which was not a bad thing at all. If the preseason party line is to be taken seriously, this is the Most Important Meet Ever, a make-or-break line in the sand that will determine whether the historic track will survive the pressures of corporate profit demands or be retrofitted as a glorified annex to the horticultural splendor of the L.A.
It is tempting to take advantage of Santa Anita Park’s opening day Tuesday by launching into a sweaty reminiscence of “how things have changed.” Of how the Southern California circuit is a dim shadow of its glorious past. Of how the average ontrack attendance has declined by 20,000 souls over the past 30 years. Or of names like Shoemaker, Frankel, and Whittingham, as if summoning their ghosts could make things right.
Merry Christmas, I hope.
As the Christmas holiday approaches, Kevin Habell’s staff of 14 has been hard at work at San Luis Rey Downs, cleaning the approximately 200 stalls that were evacuated but not burned in the fire of Dec. 7.
“Cleaning, painting, hauling the muck, and leveling all the stall floors,” Habell said. “Making those stalls as perfect as we can for the day horses will be coming back.”
Habell is also collecting estimates on the demolition of the barns that were burned, now barely standing as charred, skeletal reminders of that terrible Thursday.
It’s not every day that a racing company’s plans for the future are laid out in stark terms anyone can understand. More often than not, the public is delivered corporate platitudes and pies in the sky. Not so last Wednesday at Santa Anita, where track owner Frank Stronach and chief operating officer Tim Ritvo answered pointed questions from a group of owners and trainers concerning the future of California racing in the wake of the San Luis Rey Downs fire.
Of all the generous donations descending upon Del Mar in the wake of the San Luis Rey Downs fire evacuation, few rang with more of a sense of pure community than the van load of stable supplies that pulled up to the backstretch recreation room late last Tuesday afternoon.
From Thoroughbred trainers … in Florida.
Kevin Habell, general manager of San Luis Rey Downs, steered his dusty SUV up past the equipment yard and towering hay barn to the far eastern reaches of the 240-acre property. It was Monday afternoon, four days after a vicious piece of the Lilac Fire had done its worst, and Habell was showing a visitor exactly how the wind-blown flames had attacked the training center, gutting seven barns and damaging part of another, while killing as many as 46 of the 450 horses stabled there.
What this reporter witnessed Thursday was the end destination of the mass fire evacuation of the horses and people from San Luis Rey Downs Training Center in north San Diego County. The horses were transported by an impromptu caravan of horse trailers, from commercial big rigs to backyard two-stalls, to the empty stables of the Del Mar Fairgrounds, which opened its doors and mustered a remarkably efficient operation of volunteers and professional handlers.
They will run the Los Alamitos CashCall Futurity and the Starlet Stakes on Saturday, although participation apparently was neither encouraged nor required. Only five 2-year-olds could be mustered for each of the Grade 1 events, from an estimated 2015 U.S. foal crop of 20,850.
