“Mr. Mabee, my name is Randy Lowe,” he said. “You don't know me, but could I invest this in your company?”

Mabee opened the envelope and found a check for $100,000. Still plenty of money today, and this was 1986. Mabee looked at Lowe.

“Is this real?” he asked. “Where did this come from?”

So Lowe told him. He had always played the Pick 6. It was the only bet, he felt, that might change your life if you could actually hit one time. A few weeks previously, he had gone to Santa Anita with $120 in his pocket. It was as much as he could scrape together, as an insurance agent wearily accustomed to doors closing on his pitch. He staked $96 on his Pick 6. Add the price of his seat, something to eat, there wouldn't be much left. He was 29 years old, struggling to pay his bills, going nowhere.

Almost everybody was out after the first leg, a 35-to-one blowout. A professional gambler heard that Lowe was still in, asked to see the remaining lines, and offered $10,000 for his ticket. Lowe held his nerve and, though three of the next four legs were also won by outsiders, was still clinging to a live bet come the final leg. He had four shots.

It wasn't a typical Santa Anita day at all, and he peered down the track into a cold fog. “I was sitting there all by myself, nervous as nervous could be,” Lowe recalls. “It was a six-furlong sprint. As soon as the race started, I was yelling. Turning in, there were five horses across the track, and only one I didn't have. I remember looking up and saying, 'Please God, please don't let that horse beat me.' We ended up running one, two, three, four.”

The tension didn't end there, though. How many others could possibly be left standing? This really could change his life. Then the voice of track announcer Trevor Denman.

“Ladies and gentlemen, one ticket wins the Pick 6 today.”

Lowe rushed downstairs to the phone booth, which had to be unlocked by request, and called home.

His father could hear Lowe panting. “What's wrong?”

“I just won the Pick 6.”

“Well, what did it pay?”

“$156,000.”

“What!?”

“I don't know what to do. Do I take it in cash or what?”

After the IRS took their share, Lowe asked for $100,000 as a check and the rest in bills. For a couple of months, he carried that check around with him. He'd take it out and stare at it, asked banks about interest rates. Then he heard that Mabee, doyen of Californian racing, was starting up an insurance division. So Lowe took up his post by the elevator and waited.

Mabee heard him out, shook his head, and gave Lowe his check.

“I don't have partners,” he said.

But then he added that if Lowe believed in him, to quite that extent, then he should make an appointment at his head office in San Diego and they could see whether there might be a vacancy for him somewhere.

A week later Lowe drove down the coast, checked into a hotel and presented himself at Mabee's office.

“And where does he take me for this interview?” he says, grinning. “Del Mar racetrack.”

Mabee had a couple of runners on the card. The first would win, he declared, proposing a $1,000 exacta with the three horse.

“Okay,” Lowe said. “But you're going to lose your money. The one is going to finish second.”

And that's just how it played out. Next race, Mabee was betting the four horse.

“Again, you're going to lose your money,” Lowe said. “The nine will win.”

Sure enough, Lowe was right again. Long story short, he put Mabee on six consecutive winners and a couple of exactas into the bargain. Mabee looked at the young man in bewilderment.     “If you can sell insurance as well as you pick racehorses,” he said, “we can go very far.”

Before long, Lowe was getting calls from his workaholic boss at 5 a.m. asking for counsel not just in handicapping but in placing his horses. Gradually he became a fixture in Mabee's entourage. At the time, remember, his boss was on the board of the Breeders' Cup, chairman at Del Mar, and building up the Big Bear Markets grocery chain.

“John was a very honest, stand-up kind of guy,” Lowe recalls. “He wasn't the kind anyone could push around, but he was very fair. He demanded that things be done in the right way. He used to tell me that meetings were for people who like to waste time. If you had an idea, you should just go ahead and do it.

“And it was a friendship that really blossomed. I just couldn't believe that a man of his importance and stature would take an interest in somebody who really didn't have much of anything. A lot of the times, I couldn't afford where they were staying. So, I'd try to find a cheaper hotel and John would say, 'Nonsense!' And he'd get me a room. He made me feel like part of the family. And, you know, that rubbed some people the wrong way… I mean, I'm a Chinese guy. I used to stand in the back of pictures. But John would say, 'What you doing back there? You come down here and stand right near me.'”

Before long, anyone seeking insurance from Mabee's company in Los Angeles was being referred to Randall E. Lowe. He would be taken into even the biggest meetings: with Bob Lewis, or Saudi princes. Mabee's former partner in the Los Angeles Chargers, Barron Hilton, kept calling him Mr. Lowe. “No, sir,” he would say. “Please, just 'Randy'!”

Lowe's first venture into racehorse ownership had been, let's say, enterprising. Having identified a potential claim, he approached his uncle: “I got two-thirds of what I need, can you loan me the rest?” Then he went to his father, and said: “Dad, I got two-thirds of the money, can you lend me the rest?” Finally, he went to his mother–his parents had divorced–and you know what he said. That horse won a couple of races, and Lowe did even better with one claimed from Mabee himself, winning seven in a row. And meanwhile he has honed that freakish acuity as a handicapper, winning the Pick 6 201 times since that fateful day in 1986.

Obviously, we can't expect Lowe to share the secret. “But I have been handicapping ever since I was seven years old,” he says. “My dad used to stare at the Racing Form, spread on the dining room table, and I'd look from the other side and ask questions. He would tell me what he knew, my uncle would tell me what he knew, my cousin the same. And I started reading books and gradually put the whole thing together, my own formula.”

Soon after Lowe entered Mabee's life, so did Best Pal–the best horse ever raced by his Golden Eagle Farm, runner-up in the Kentucky Derby and winner of such iconic West Coast prizes as the Hollywood Gold Cup and Santa Anita Handicap. And fate decreed that many years later Lowe would honor his mentor by naming a horse for a combination of the stable (Golden) and its champion (Pal).

This chapter of Lowe's remarkable story traces to a Barretts sale in the fall of 2005. Mabee had died three years earlier, and Lowe had just broken up with a girlfriend. Seated today alongside his wife Brenda, he laughs at the memory. “You can print this if you want,” he says. “I said, 'The heck with these women, I'm just going to own racehorses instead!' And that's why I went to the auction.”

By that stage, having done so himself, Lowe had resolved to move his horses up in the world. There had been good claims, bad claims, plenty in between. But he figured that if ever he was going to find a Best Pal, he would have to change tack. So at the Pomona auction he bought a $28,000 weanling filly by Mutakddim (a son of Seeking The Gold who had raced in Europe) from the estate of Leon Rasmussen, the dosage theorist.

Lowe named her Sumthingtottalkabt and she won five for Wally Dollase, just falling short at stakes level but often melting the clock, both mornings and afternoons. Lowe decided she had enough speed to try his hand at breeding, and paired her with Midshipman.

The result was Lady Shipman, who missed by a neck in the GI Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint of 2015, but racked up 11 stakes and over $900,000. Her very first foal, by Uncle Mo, is Golden Pal, now limbering up for a Breeders' Cup treble after brilliantly avenging his dam's defeat in the equivalent race last year, having already won the GII Juvenile Turf Sprint in 2020. And, throughout, it has almost felt as though somebody up there is taking a benign interest.

Lady Shipman herself, for instance, fell well short of her reserve in a 2-year-old sale. She had worked nine-and-four, no medication and no whip, and Lowe wanted $210,000. She was led out at just $35,000. In turn, moreover, Lowe thought so much of Golden Pal as a yearling that he raised the bar higher yet at the September Sale. This time, however, bidding stalled at $325,000.

With Lady Shipman, people had more or less mocked him to his face. “You don't have any money,” they said. “And yet you're sitting there holding out for what you think is 'fair'!”

“Well, I didn't want people to take advantage of me,” he recalls with a shrug. “So I didn't sell her. And with Golden Pal, I told all these different trainers what the horse would be. And nobody believed me.”

The unchecked box against the colt had been sesamoiditis, but Coolmore remained interested. Lowe was so confident that he gave them 60 days to see how the horse came along. After what he recalls with a grin as “59 days and 23 hours”, the colt was returned. Okay, no problem, Lowe would send him to Wesley Ward. He had seen how the trainer adored the colt at the sale, but couldn't find a buyer.

Soon Golden Pal was showing so much speed that Lowe found himself turning down multiples of his sale reserve until, after that first Breeders' Cup, yielding to a renewed offer from a Coolmore partnership.

Now Lowe is once again showing his faith in Lady Shipman, her Omaha Beach colt another RNA in the same ring last week at $385,000. Lowe is undaunted. Eventually, people have always had to come round. “This was my fourth time trying to sell a horse,” he says. “And this time I didn't even try to talk anybody into buying him. But I'm telling you now: this horse is very, very fast. I'll just race him myself and I'll show everybody. I'll win the Breeders' Cup with him, too!”

Despite producing a champion at the first attempt, Lady Shipman has certainly charted the full spectrum of this business, having meanwhile lost both her next two foals. But Lowe is ecstatic with Golden Pal's weanling full-sister, Luvwhatyoudo; while she's now in foal to Essential Quality.

Whatever happens from here, it has already been a remarkable odyssey. When Golden Pal won his first Breeders' Cup in the silks of Ranlo Investments LLC, few realized that this was one guy with one horse. Sure, Lowe has had plenty of other horses over the past 38 years; and right now, indeed, has an interest in five. But he still watches the big names spending the big money, and wonders how many of them will ever find a horse this fast.

He hopes that the friends who bought Golden Pal will prioritize a third Breeders' Cup, but understands they have vast experience and a corresponding agenda. If they want to raise the bar by trying him on dirt–albeit the plan is apparently the GII Woodford S., on grass, on October 8–then he wishes them all possible luck.

After all, this is a man who got through college living off 50-cent enchiladas, twice a day, requesting extra chips and a glass of water. Somehow, from $20 a week, he needed to salvage something to take to the windows after getting into the racetrack for free before the last race.

“When Lady Shipman ran at the Breeders' Cup, we were in front one step before the wire and then her head came back,” he recalls. “One more half-step, we win the race. And then I probably would have sold her, and we wouldn't have had Golden Pal. Now all these different people are telling me to sell her. But every time I've ever been to see her, at all those different racetracks and now on the farm, she has come up and put her head on my shoulder, like she wants a hug. Every single time. And looks for her peppermints. So it would be very hard to sell. Sometimes there's more to life than just making money.

“It's impossible, what's happened. For a person who used to stand there at Hollywood Park, begging people as they're leaving the track, 'Excuse me, sir, could I have your Racing Form, your program?' It's taken a long time. It's almost like life is played like some kids' board game. You go this way, you go that way. All I know is that when I hoisted that Breeders' Cup trophy up in the air, I was thanking John Mabee.”

Lowe remembers seeing an old movie as a boy. About kids his own age: one was selling newspapers, one was shining shoes, that kind of thing. And they pooled their few cents and befriended a racetracker who would place their wagers. Every time, they lost. But then they won the big pool. Their friend got so excited that he had a heart attack, dropped to the floor.

“The kids are waiting for him outside,” Lowe recalls. “His car is still there. But he never comes out. And I always think that watching that movie, growing up, gave me inspiration. Because my motto has always been that if you believe in anything enough, and you want it bad enough, it will happen. You might not do it today. You might not do it tomorrow. But if you believe to the day you die, it will happen.”

The post How A Golden Touch Introduced Best of Pals appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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It's easy to imagine what the scene might be if Going to Vegas would prevail in Saturday's $2 million Maker's Mark Filly & Mare Turf.

Oh, the humanity!

No! The humanity won't be quite as numerous, said Bing Bush, founder and manager of Abbondanza Racing, one of the three partnership organizations involved.

“That was a bit of a concern,” Bush conceded. “But you can't get in the winner's circle unless you have a lanyard and I think we have 30 lanyards apiece for each of the three groups. So it'll be down from 200 or so to 90.”

The John C. Mabee, at 1 1/8 miles on the Jimmy Durante Turf Course, turned out to be the middle leg, albeit an important one, on Going to Vegas' hop, step and jump into participation in racing's championship weekend.

Hop: The former $50,000 claimer won an allowance over the Mabee course on July 16, opening day of the summer meeting.

Step: The victory, by 2 ¼ lengths over Dogtag in the Mabee, which brought with it a $120,000 share of the purse, but was not a be-all for the connections. Going to Vegas was not made eligible as a foal for the Breeders' Cup and the daunting prospect of having to pay a six-figure supplemental entry fee remained.

Jump: The Grade 1, 1 ¼-mile Rodeo Drive on Oct. 2 at Santa Anita was a “Win & You're In” fees paid qualifier for the Filly & Mare Turf, and Going to Vegas went wire-to-wire under Umberto Rispoli, holding off Luck by a head.

So, on Sunday morning, Bush and some friends watched from the two-story temporary structure along the stretch as Going to Vegas went four furlongs in :49.20 in her final work for Saturday's race.

“Sometimes at the end of a work she tends to lug in a little bit, but today she didn't,” Bush said. “She did it very easily and galloped out very nicely, so we couldn't be happier.”

And on Monday, Bush and friends gathered in the Del Mar paddock for the post position draw for all 14 Breeders' Cup races to see Going to Vegas get the No. 1 post and be assigned morning line odds of 12-1.

“Under normal circumstances, I would be disappointed with the No. 1,” Bush said. “But under these circumstances, I think it's all right. She'll be able to use her natural speed to get a good position – she doesn't have to have the lead, but she might — and go from there.”

Bush resides in the complex of white houses on the hillside north of and overlooking the track just across Via de la Valle.

“I can walk here,” he points out.

If Going to Vegas pulls off an upset on Saturday, Bush – and 90 lanyard-wearers in the filly's camp – will be walking on air to the winner's circle. It won't be like the John C. Mabee. But they won't mind.

The post Hop, Skip, And A Jump: Going To Vegas Brings Hundreds To World Championships appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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“He was an amazing person, first and foremost,” his son said. “For me, that’s the most important thing. On top of that, he was a great horse trainer.”

Gary Jones was the son of longtime California-based trainer Farrell Jones and took over his father’s stable upon his retirement in 1975. He picked right up where his father left off, winning with the first horse he ever saddled, King Wako, on Dec. 26, 1975 at Santa Anita, and quickly established himself as one of the leading trainers in Southern California. In 1976, he had 47 winners at the Santa Anita meet, breaking the record that had been set by his father. It was the first of 15 meet titles he would win.

Over the years, Jones continued to pile up stakes wins, many of them with fellow Hall of Famer Chris McCarron aboard.

“Gary was family,” McCarron said. “He was the first major trainer in Southern California to give me a real shot. I developed a relationship more quickly with Gary than any other trainer out there and I will be forever grateful for his support. I was tickled to death when he got inducted into the Hall of Fame years ago. I am so glad it happened before he passed away. As the years went on, we became incredibly close and our families got very close. I am very saddened by this loss.”

Though Jones won stakes with numerous horses, he will be best remembered for two–Turkoman and Best Pal.

Turkoman enjoyed his best season in 1986, when he was named Champion Older Male. He won the GI Widener H., the GII Oaklawn H., the GI Marlboro Cup H. and was second in both the GI Jockey Club Gold Cup and the GI Breeders’ Cup Classic.

“Turkoman did not care about running,” Jones told the Del Mar Times in 2014. “I had to breeze him an eighth of a mile the morning of a race to let him know he was going to run.”

After starting his career for Ian Jory, Best Pal was turned over to Jones in 1991, midway through his 3-year-old season. After a win in the GII Swaps S., Best Pal, owned by John C. Mabee, won the inaugural running of the Pacific Classic.

“It was a big deal at the time,” Jones said in 2014. “The race was Mr. Mabee’s dream. There was quite a bit of pressure.”

“Best Pal had a limited amount of ability, but he was all desire. He never wanted to lose–a classy son of a gun. And he was a character,” Jones added.

Jones also trained the outstanding fillies Kostroma (Ire), who won the GI Beverly D. S., the GI Yellow Ribbon Invitational S. and the GI Santa Barbara H., and Lakeway, a daughter of Seattle Slew who won four Grade I races. Jones won his first $1-million race when capturing the 1983 GI Hollywood Futurity with Fali Time.

Though just 52 at the time, Jones retired in 1996 after suffering from heart problems.

“He had some heart conditions he was dealing with at the time and made that decision along with my mom,” Marty Jones said. “He felt like it was time to turn the page.”

The younger Jones took over his father’s stable after he retired.

It was not until 18 years later that Jones made the Hall of Fame.

“I was flabbergasted when they told me,” he said in 2014 after learning that he was to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. “I had been passed over a few times already, and I had decided I probably wouldn’t be making it.”

Jones won 1,465 races during his career and his horses earned a total of $52,672,611. He won 102 graded stakes.

In addition to his son Marty, Jones is survived by his wife, Joan, and another son, David, who is an attorney.

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The Grade II race with its $150,000 purse goes as the 10th of 11 on a card that will have an early starting time of 1 p.m.

Raymundos Secret, a Florida-bred by a British stallion named Treasure Beach, comes into the mile and one-eighth Mabee off a photo-finish tally in a one-mile allowance race at Del Mar on August 14. That was the first start by the Phil D'Amato-trained bay since October 26 of last year, so it surely should serve as a good tightener. It was also the filly's fourth win in six lifetime starts, all on the green. She races for the partnership of Sierra Racing or Sterling Stables.

Interestingly, though not surprisingly, the top two riders at the session – Umberto Rispoli and Flavien Prat – ride the top two fillies in the feature. Rispoli will get a leg up on Lady Prancealot, while Prat goes aboard Raymundos Secret.

Here's the full field for the headliner from the rail out with riders and morning line odds:

Amerman Racing's Catch the Eye (J.C. Diaz, Jr., 15-1); Lady Prancealot (5/2); Sondereker, Lewkowitz or Albert, et al's Don't Blame Judy (Drayden Van Dyke, 10-1); Mr. and Mrs. Larry D. Williams' Pulpit Rider (Juan Hernandez, 5-1); Little Red Feather Racing's Zee Drop (Abel Cedillo, 6-1); Jeong or Johnson's Meal Ticket (Tiago Pereira, 15-1); Hronis Racing's Quick (Jose Valdivia, Jr., 8-1), and Raymundos Secret (2-1).

Pulpit Rider comes into the Mabee off a photo-finish score in the Solana Beach Stakes for California-breds going a mile on the grass at Del Mar on August 15. The 5-year-old mare by the late Lucky Pulpit has won six races and more than $460,000 in purses.

Zee Drop, a 4-year-old chestnut by Lemon Drop Kid, steps into stakes competition for the first time. She's won three of her eight lifetime outings, including a victory on the green at Del Mar last September.

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How many times has the Pacific Classic, the signature event of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club's summer meeting, been the only stakes race on that day's program?

The answer, given away by the headline on this piece, is never.

From its start the race that DMTC founding father John C. Mabee envisioned, championed, prodded and pushed to existence – and then won the 1991 inaugural with his Best Pal – has always had stakes company on the card.

But if, as the saying goes, 'Two's company, three's a crowd,' the 30th running on Saturday goes beyond a crowd to a throng. In addition to the $500,000 Classic there are four other stakes, with purses totaling $650,000, on an 11-race program.

How did it come to this?

For the first 16 years, officials carded one other stakes race on Classic Day. Then, in 2007-2009, three besides the Classic were included on the program. A cutback to Classic-plus-two was the formula from 2010 to 2018. Then, last year, the envelope was pushed to the plus-four that will be continued on Saturday.

The stakes escalation, DMTC executive vice president, racing and industry relations, Tom Robbins points out, is both practical and in keeping with a nationwide trend.

“The thing I like about it, and I think David (racing secretary David Jerkens) would agree, is that if you're going after a horse or horses on the East Coast, it's sometimes easier to sell them on the idea of coming out here if they can send more than one out and all travel at the same time on the same day. It has that advantage.

“And from the financial/business side it certainly attracts the players. We want to be attractive to our customers, to have quality programs, and this is our signature race surrounded by others that will also attract national attention.”

Craig Dado, executive vice president and chief marketing officer, not only echoes those sentiments but turns up the volume.

“I'm a big fan of it (stakes stacking),” Dado said. “In an era where you're trying to not only compete with other tracks but stand out, it makes sense. We're hoping to get a lot of eyeballs from around the country on the program Saturday. I'm not standing at home plate and pointing to the centerfield fence, but we're hoping to break the handle record.”

The highest single-day handle total in track history, except for the two days the Breeders' Cup was hosted in 2017, is $25,870,431 on Pacific Classic Day in 2018.

With Del Mar, like nearly every track in the country, racing sans all but a limited number of on-track spectators and relying on internet wagering to provide the lifeblood handle money totals, the notion that 'less is more' becomes an absurdity.

“We look at how those (other stakes) would fit on our schedule, but also how they would fit on the national calendar as well,” Robbins said. “We really want to highlight the Pacific Classic but we want to have a really big day. A lot of tracks do the same thing.”

There were five graded stakes, three of them Grade Is, of 12 races on the Travers Day program at Saratoga on August 8. Churchill Downs' adaption to the Covid-19 circumstances was a basic relocation of the multiple undercard stakes on the Kentucky Oaks and Kentucky Derby day programs, many of them Grade Is and Grade IIs, along with the marquee events to the first weekend of September instead of May.

“We could feel the heat (of lured-away horses) in some ways, but the good news is there were not a lot of conflicts there,” Robbins said. “No question the Pacific Classic is going to be the strongest day of the year, and that's what it's designed to be.”

The San Clemente Stakes for 3-year-old fillies was on the inaugural Pacific Classic card, and hasn't been a big day invitee since.

In the next 15 years when one additional stakes was included on the menu, the most frequent Classic partner was the Rancho Bernardo Handicap, a 6 ½-furlong sprint for older fillies and mares (7 times). The Pat O'Brien, a 7-furlong sprint, was co-featured four times, the Del Mar Oaks three times and the Del Mar Debutante once.

The O'Brien, Oaks and Debutante all were, or eventually became, Grade I events.

Robbins on the Rancho Bernardo as Classic companion: “It was a race that we wanted to give a little strength to at that time and it fit well on the calendar.

“This year we're running it this Friday because it still fits on the calendar. It came up strong this year, so with that on Friday and the Del Mar Mile on Sunday, we have a good feature Friday, good feature on Sunday and a lot of strength on Saturday with what many consider the best horse in the country (Maximum Security) running in the Classic.”

The Rancho Bernardo has K M N Racing's Sneaking Out, a 4-year-old filly fresh from victory in the Grade II Great Lady M Stakes on the 4th of July as the 8-5 morning line favorite in a competitive field of eight.

The O'Brien and the Oaks have been Classic complements, though never as a duo, every year since 2005. The Del Mar Mile or the Del Mar Handicap have, separately, served to provide a major event on the turf every year since 2010.

Interest of racing fans nationally figures to be piqued by Saturday's Grade I Oaks and Grade II Handicap. The Oaks, at 1 1/8-miles on the turf, features Gary Barber's Laura's Light, trained by Peter Miller, who seeks to take the final step up the graded stakes ladder after winning the Grade III Honeymoon at Hollywood Park on May 30 and the Grade II San Clemente here on July 25.

The Del Mar Handicap is alluring due to the presence of United. The 5-year-old son of Giant's Causeway was narrowly beaten by 2019 Horse of the Year Bricks and Mortar in last year's Breeders' Cup Turf and has won three straight graded stakes, most recently the Eddie Read at Del Mar on July 26.

“We're always aware of the schedule at the tracks before and after us on the calendar,” Robbins said. “It used to be Hollywood Park, now Santa Anita. The Bing Crosby and the Pat O'Brien have moved around to (align) with the Triple Bend at those places.

“We try to figure out what works best starting with Southern California and then looking at the other parts of the country.”

When it comes to the day of the Pacific Classic, Sunday holds a 16-13 lead over Saturday. That's mainly attributable to a streak of nine straight Sunday presentations from 2001-2009 and four in a row starting in 2011. Saturday, however, is on a six-year streak.

“That's not just a racing department decision,” Robbins said. “We do analysis and we work together. Every department has input on something like that. We bounced around with it on those years we had it on Sunday. I think it was even held the day after Travers Day (at Saratoga) one year.

“But now, we've kind of found this niche. You've got to factor in things from a racing and also from a business standpoint. We've found that Saturdays are typically stronger than Sundays.”

The numbers for the past decade don't lie. Over the span when the Classic was staged on Sunday from 2011-2014, the handle averaged $19.5 million. On Saturdays the last five year the average is $23.9 million.

“All the big race days have moved to Saturday,” Dado noted. “You get more eyeballs on the races and bigger handles.”

Procrastination is not an option when it comes to pinpointing the spot on the calendar for the Pacific Classic.

“That decision is usually made early,” Robbins said. “At the end of one calendar year or early the next. It's a day that people want to know about well in advance. The switchboard will start getting calls about it early in the year.

“We work hand-in-hand with the Thoroughbred Owners of California and we try to give them a stakes schedule in March. So we'll know well before that, but we don't generally announce anything until we have their approval.”

In the year of COVID-19, the squandering of a potential bar bet is but a speck of loss in the overall picture. Consider this, racing fans:

“We had a Breeders' Cup 2021 hat giveaway planned for Pacific Classic Day this year,” Dado said, a reference to Del Mar's second time to host the two-day fall championship event.

It'll keep until next year.

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