Tag: Del Mar Summer

At the start of the 2022 summer meet at Del Mar, few people in Southern California had ever heard of jockey Hector I. Berrios. But his brilliant winning ride in the Wickerr Stakes aboard Argentine-bred Irideo for trainer Marcelo Polanco caught the attention of horseplayers and horsemen alike. Going a mile on turf, Berrios allowed Irideo to settle at the back of the pack while saving ground, found room along the rail into the stretch, swung out to split horses with a furlong to run and won by three quarters of a length going away, paying $65 to his backers.

Two weeks after the Wickerr, Berrios struck again, winning the Grade 1 Clement L. Hirsch Stakes aboard Blue Stripe, another product of Argentina's breeding program from the Polanco stable. This one was not as big a surprise, Blue Stripe paying $12.60 as the 5-1 third choice in a field of five. Berrios finished the summer meet with 18 wins from 127 mounts, putting him a surprising fifth in the standings.

For Berrios, a 36-year-old native of Santiago, Chile, the 2022 Clement L. Hirsch was his first graded stakes victory in North America. But it was far from his first big-race triumph. With over 2,500 wins in his native country, including eight victories in Chilean classic races, he was used to getting top mounts. But carrying that resume to the United States didn't translate into immediate success.

Berrios first rode in the U.S. in the spring of 2011, starting out in Florida and moving his tack to Southern California midway into the summer meet at Del Mar, where he won three races from 11 mounts, including the CTT and TOC Stakes aboard Peruvian-bred Private Affair for trainer Ruben Cardenas. After enjoying some success at Santa Anita and in South Florida in 2011-'12, he returned to Chile, riding there five years before returning to Florida in July 2018. He continued to win races at Gulfstream Park, but never got much of an opportunity with top-level horses.

By last summer, Berrios was ready to try California again, teaming up with agent Michael Burns. The numbers confirmed it was the right move. At year's end, Berrios' mounts won 68 races and earned $3,872,506 – by far his best year earnings-wise.

And 2023 has only gotten better.

Berrios has added seven more graded stakes wins to his ledger this year, including last weekend's Grade 1 Bing Crosby aboard California-bred The Chosen Vron and the Grade 2 Eddie Read Stakes with Irish-bred Gold Phoenix. Those horses keyed riding triples for Berrios on both the July 29 and July 30 programs.

Through the first seven racing days at Del Mar, Berrios is atop the rider standings, tied with the current Southern California leader Juan Hernandez, each with 11 wins. Only one of the 11 wins by Berrios came aboard a betting favorite, compared with four for Hernandez. All but two of his wins were on turf, but his ride in the Bing Crosby showed he can get the job done on dirt as well. His $3,993,330 year-to-date mount earnings have already exceeded last year's total, with a lot of big races yet to come.

He's definitely one to keep an eye on.

By The Numbers

Through the first two weeks of the meet (seven days, 70 races), average field size is 9.7 runners per race (9.0 on dirt, 10.7 on turf). There have been 40 races on dirt and 30 on turf. The Ship & Win program is working, but the racing department deserves credit for putting together excellent, competitive cards so far.

Average parimutuel payoff is $13.61, with a median of $9.80. Not much difference between turf and dirt, with turf average payoff $13.21 and $13.92 on dirt.

The percentage of winning favorites overall is 27.1 percent (30 percent on dirt, 23.3 percent on turf). Larger fields make for fewer winning favorites.

Front-runners have not fared well so far, on dirt or turf.

Of the 40 dirt races, only four winners led at every call. Sixteen winners pressed the pace or were forwardly placed, with 12 racing in midpack, and eight closing from the back end of the field.

Of the 30 turf races, only one horse went wire to wire (and that was in a two-turn race). Six winners pressed the pace or were forwardly placed, 11 were in midpack, and 12 closed from the back.

It's been a pattern in recent years that front-runners on turf are more successful as the meet goes on. Keep that in mind as you handicap the Jimmy Durante grass course.

Two jockeys – the aforementioned Berrios and Umberto Rispoli – have been especially dominating on turf, winning 15 of the 30 races run so far (Berrios nine, Rispoli six).

Among trainers, Phil D'Amato has won seven turf races, with one victory on the main track.

Overall, 38 trainers have won races this summer at Del Mar, with D'Amato's eight victories leading the way. Doug O'Neill and Bob Baffert are tied with six wins apiece, with Peter Miller winning four.

The post Del Mar Summer: Rising Star Berrios Making All The Right Moves appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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As a kid growing up in the Midwest, I'd entertain myself during the long winter months memorizing pitching and batting statistics for Major League Baseball players.

Trainer Leonard Powell had a similar hobby during his childhood in France. Except, instead of baseball players, Powell and his brother memorized pedigrees of important horses, or commit to memory every runner – including sire and dam – and where they finished in major races like the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp.

Decades later, those mental exercises are paying off for Powell, who is quietly and steadily ascending the trainer rankings on the Southern California circuit. In 2022, the 46-year-old won five graded stakes with four different runners and his 32 victories overall and $2,131,523 in earnings represented his best year to date.

Powell got off to a quick start at the Del Mar summer meet, winning three races from seven starters opening weekend. Anisette, a Great Britain-bred 3-year-old filly by Awtaad, was the stable star, winning the Grade 2 San Clemente Stakes impressively, drawing away from her 13 rivals by 2 ½ lengths under jockey Umberto Rispoli. Owned by Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, Anisette is unbeaten in her two U.S. stars this year after winning one of three in England as a 2-year-old. She will be pointed to the Del Mar Oaks on Aug. 19, a race that gave Powell his first Grade 1 victory in 2018 with French-bred Fatale Bere.

Like Fatale Bere and Anisette, many of Powell's best runners are European imports whose bloodlines trace back to those he memorized in the late 1980s and '90s.

“It's helped me quite a bit when I get horses from Europe,” Powell said. “When I look at prospects I know some of the first or second dams and always look at their traits – horses that did well on firm ground or had speed.”

This fascination with pedigrees and the traits of horses was passed on to Powell by his late father, David Powell, a U.S. citizen who was a man of the world by virtue of his own pedigree. David Powell's mother was a Jewish woman who fled Nazi Germany before World War II. His father was a U.S. citizen who worked at the U.S. Consulate in Argentina. David Powell was born in Buenos Aires as an American because of his father's citizenship.

The Powells eventually moved to the United States, but the marriage didn't last and David Powell went with his mother when she returned to her native Germany. There he began taking horse riding instructions from a native of France who would become his step-father. At the stables he met a young Frenchman whose father was a diplomat in Berlin; his name was Andre Fabre, who would go on to a legendary career training Thoroughbreds in France.

But it wasn't Fabre who influenced David Powell to move to France and embark on a career in Thoroughbred racing and breeding. After Powell moved with his family back to the U.S. he met another Frenchman, the famed Daily Racing Form cartoonist Pierre Bellocq, better known throughout the racing world as PEB, who convinced David Powell  – then a student at Columbia University in New York – to move to France to learn more about the industry.

David Powell wore many hats: racing journalist, breeder, owner, racing manager, and trainer. He attended bloodstock sales around the world and took meticulous notes on every horse he saw go through the ring. Those notes on conformation and personality traits went onto index cards that became part of a voluminous library of pedigree and racing information at the Powell home in Normandy.

It was on the family's farm that young Leonard and his siblings learned the value of hard work. “We were raised with expectations,” Powell said. “When you're raised on a farm, it's very important to be there when needed.”

After high school, David Powell encouraged his son to hold off on college and instead set him up working for trainer Richard Mandella in California. It was a move that's had a long-lasting influence on Powell's career.

“I was 18 when I worked for Mandella, so I was very much a blank page,” he said. “He has a strong work ethic and is very rigorous. He really pays attention to details.”

Powell maintains a relatively small stable (usually 25-30 horses), which allows him to be hands on with his horses.

“During morning training it's important to stay very focused, because that's when you catch the small details that make a difference,” he said.

Following his 18 months with Mandella, he returned to France and served a compulsory term with the French army.

“And then I did a bit of university to make my mom happy,” he said with a laugh.

Following school, Powell took on another apprenticeship, this time working for John Hawkes in Australia, where he said trainers really push their horses hard to get them fit, but then give them time off periodically. “They treat the horses a bit like elastic bands,” he said. “You pull and give, pull and give, so it doesn't break.”

Late in 2003, Powell set up shop in Southern California with a handful of horses. He went over a year before recording his first win in March 2005, but patience has been the trainer's strong suit. Powell recorded his first graded stakes win in 2008, but his breakthrough came with the California-bred gelding Soi Phet, which he claimed for $16,000 at Hollywood Park in May 2013.

Soi Phet ran off four consecutive victories for his new connections, then ran third behind Mucho Macho Man while making his stakes debut in the Grade 1 Awesome Again Stakes. The popular gelding never could secure a graded stakes victory, but he'd win another 10 races for Powell from 2013 to 2019, retiring at age 11 with just over $1 million in earnings.

“Soi Phet was the horse that put me at a higher level,” Powell said. “It gave confidence to owners that we could do a good job with good horses. He won stakes on dirt, turf, and synthetic.”

How did Soi Phet remain sound and competitive in stakes competition for so long?

“We gave him breaks every year, about six weeks off at a farm,” Powell said. “We didn't wait for an injury or for something to go wrong.”

Powell said it's not always easy to convince owners that horses may need time off when they're going in good form, but that it's the right thing to do for the long-term benefit of the horse.

Married with three daughters, Powell said the days are long during the Del Mar meet, but the family takes advantage of the seaside location, spending time on the beach when time allows.

“I like getting on boogie boards and riding the waves with my daughters,” he said. “The races don't start until two o'clock, so you really get a chance to enjoy family time.”

When it comes time to celebrate victories like last weekend's San Clemente, it's usually a quiet family dinner at home with a “nice bottle of wine,” Powell said.

“Racing days end late in Del Mar,” he added. “By the time the horse is cooled out in can be 8:30 at night, and the alarm still goes on at 3:45 the next morning.”

The post Del Mar Summer: Fast Start Puts Seaside Spotlight On Powell appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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It's crazy how one horse can change lives.

But it's one horse winning one race that I can credit for giving me the opportunity to spend summers in Del Mar.

I'll be in the stands for Friday's opening of the 84^th summer season at the track Bing Crosby made famous, all because of a gigantic upset in a major race more than 50 years ago – before I'd even heard of Del Mar. It's allowed me to witness history “Where the Turf Meets the Surf”: Dare and Go's upset of Cigar in the 1996 Pacific Classic; the first Del Mar Breeders' Cup in 2017; Flightline's unforgettable performance in the 2022 Pacific Classic, winning off by 19 ¼ lengths; and much more.

To get to Del Mar, as the track's signature song goes, I've taken a plane, taken a train, taken a car. (My first trip there was on a motorcycle, but there's probably too many syllables for Crosby and his songwriting partners to have gotten that into the lyrics).

In truth, though, I've been riding a horse here for most of the 45 years I've been attending Del Mar.

Let's go back to Feb. 13, 1971, when a Cal-bred 4-year-old named War Heim sprang a massive upset in the Charles H. Strub Stakes at Santa Anita. Named after the track's founder, the mile and a quarter Strub culminated a series of three races for 4-year-olds that began with the seven-furlong Malibu and continued with the 1 1/8-mile San Fernando. (The San Fernando and Strub are no longer run, and the Malibu was moved to December, where it's become the final Grade 1 race of the year for 3-year-olds.)

I was a senior in high school in northern Illinois in 1971 who hadn't discovered horse racing yet and probably spent that February weekend shoveling snow. But my future father-in-law, Bill Watts, was at Santa Anita with his wife, Helen, and he'd either gotten a tip or had a hunch about War Heim. He never would say how he ended up betting on the horse.

Trained by Dale Landers for Hazel Huffman, War Heim was a son of Slipped Disc who came into the Strub off a decent third at 37-1 odds in the San Fernando. He wasn't an unproven horse, having won a division of the Del Mar Derby the previous year, but that was on grass. The Strub was on the dirt.

With regular rider John Sellers in the saddle, War Heim maintained a good position in the early going of the Strub and entered contention going into the far turn, then swept wide around the turn to engage the front-running Hanalei Bay for the final quarter mile, getting his nose in front of that foe just at the wire.

War Heim paid an even $100 to win, $29.60 to place, and $11.20 to show as the second longest price in a field of 10 led by the previous year's Travers Stakes winner, Loud.

To this day, I don't know how much Bill put on War Heim in the Strub, but there was no exacta, trifecta, superfecta, pick 3, etc., so it had to be a significant bet on the nose to win. And that's exactly what he got.

Two days later, while the country was celebrating the Presidents Day holiday on Feb. 15 (then it was just called Washington's Birthday), Bill took Helen and daughter Carol down the coast to Del Mar in hopes of finding a house to rent for the summer racing season. They'd been renting up the road in Oceanside previous years and wanted to get a little closer to the track.

Realtor Chiquita Abbott disappointed them at first, saying she wasn't aware of any rental properties at that time. Abbott, who recently authored a book, “To Del Mar With Love, Chiquita,” added that she did have a little “plain Jane” bungalow in the beach colony for sale that was steps from the beach and a short walk to the racetrack.

Bill won enough on War Heim to make a down payment on the house, which was priced at about what you can buy a modest new car for today.

Whenever he would later see John Sellers at the races, Bill would always say, “There's the guy who bought our house.”

For years, Bill and Helen rented out the house to faculty from nearby UCSD, then occupied it for the summer months. They did some renovations and eventually moved to Del Mar full time from the Los Angeles area when Bill retired from his career with Merrill Lynch.

They didn't miss a day of racing in Del Mar until age finally caught up with them. Both are gone now, and I can say I've never met two people who had more of a passion for racing than Bill and Helen.

The house that War Heim and John Sellers bought would eventually be passed down to Carol, who I'd met in 1980 while we both worked at Daily Racing Form in Los Angeles. We were married in 1983, and after moving to Kentucky in 1988, Del Mar became the summer vacation destination for us and our kids each year. Now it's our second home.

All because of a horse.

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