Upon winning the 2003 running of the $1 million Pacific Classic with the Argentine whiz Candy Ride, Ron McAnally was asked by an enterprising TV reporter how it felt to “finally” win the marquee event of Del Mar’s summer meeting by the sea. McAnally flash his famous squinting grin and replied:
“Finally? It’s only been run 13 years.”
The message was clear, and both points of view were valid. McAnally, a member of racing’s Hall of Fame, had been winning stakes events at Del Mar since 1961 and at the time was the track’s all-time leading trainer. The reporter was not alive in 1961 – no matter – but the question reflected the esteem in which the relatively youthful Classic was held. With the exception of the Marlboro Cup or the Arlington Million, no modern, stand-alone North American event had matured faster or more prestigiously than the Pacific Classic.
And few races on the California circuit have been more coveted. The Santa Anita Handicap was for decades the jewel in the West Coast crown, while its crosstown counterpart, the Hollywood Gold Cup, delivered good value right up to its swansong at Hollywood Park in 2013. But Hollywood Park is gone, and no one really considers the Santa Anita version of the Gold Cup a legitimate replacement.
As for the Santa Anita Handicap – a race made famous by Seabiscuit and enhanced by winners such as Round Table, Ack Ack, Affirmed, Spectacular Bid, and John Henry – it has suffered disastrous competitive blows on the calendar from the advent of the Dubai World Cup and more recently the Pegasus World Cup Invitational and the Saudi Cup, run at one-month intervals early in the year.
By contrast, the Pacific Classic has certain advantages in its corner.
Del Mar enjoys stability in both its ownership, as state property, and its senior management team, along with a racing program that varies little from year to year. The Classic itself was locked in from the beginning as a weight-for-age event at a mile and one-quarter that encouraged quality 3-year-olds to participate. Its only real competition on the racing calendar comes from the $1 million Jockey Club Gold Cup, relocated to the end of the Saratoga meet, and the $800,000 Charles Town Classic, presented around a bullring in West Virginia.
The Classic purse was a million bucks at the start and stayed that way until the pandemic summer of 2020, when it was reduced to $750,000. Thankfully, the million-dollar glow has been restored for this summer’s rendition on Saturday, August 21, when the Pacific Classic will celebrate three full decades of history with its 31st running.
This writer has seen them all but one, which is not particularly unique, but it does supply a bounty of vivid memories. Some burn more brightly than others, for obvious reasons, yet each of those 30 Pacific Classics shines as the most significant event of the summer’s Del Mar experience. First, a little history.
A race of stature
The Pacific Classic was the brainchild of John C Mabee, the poor kid from Iowa who made his fortune in California with a chain of grocery stores and a business that morphed into an empire of real estate, insurance, and Thoroughbred horses. As chairman of the board of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, Mabee was at the helm for the early 1990s rebuilding of the racetrack grandstand, erected by founder Bing Crosby in 1937. He demanded that there be a Del Mar race of sufficient stature to celebrate the investment.
“John Mabee thought that, because we had been doing so well, and Del Mar had been so successful, that it was about time we had a million-dollar race,” said Dan Smith, the track’s director of media relations for 40 years. “There were tracks not doing as well as we were that had million-dollar races.”
Out West, the Santa Anita Handicap became a million-dollar race in 1986, while the Hollywood Gold Cup reached that level in 1990. Smith gets credit for coming up with the name, which seems like a natural now.
“The ‘pacific’ part fixed the race on the map, given Del Mar’s proximity to the ocean,” Smith said. “And ‘classic’ gave the name enough weight to indicate that it was intended to be a major event. There was no second choice.
“Then Best Pal went out and won the first Pacific Classic for John Mabee [see video below],” Smith added. “It was akin to Bing Crosby winning the first race ever run at Del Mar. The stars were aligned from the beginning.”
There was a raucous celebration by what seemed like the entire Gary Jones stable staff on the track as Best Pal returned to that first Pacific Classic winner’s circle on August 10, 1991. The revelry continued back at the Jones barn long past twilight, luring anyone who wandered by. It was only polite to accept a cold Corona in a toast to a gelding who would someday be in the Hall of Fame.
The inaugural Classic figured to be a tough act to follow, but that did not keep subsequent renewals from trying.
Jolie’s Halo, the quick-footed Iselin Handicap winner, dumped Edgar Prado at the start of the 1992 Classic, a dramatic turn that allowed Kent Desormeaux to guide Missionary Ridge around the ring on a string to win for fun at 24/1. The 1993 version pitted Best Pal and Missionary Ridge in a contest of Classic champions, but neither could catch the fleet Bertrando. Then in 1994 it was Tinners Way, a son of Secretariat, dusting off both Best Pal and Bertrando.
Pace, usually making the race, was the deciding factor in 1995 when Tinners Way defended his title thanks to the clock in Eddie Delahoussaye’s head. They stalked then pounced on a three-quarter fraction of 1:11.31 to come home in :24.14 for a score that was as easy as it looked.
There are too many signature moments about the 1996 Classic for this space. The sight of Cigar and his 16-race win streak coming to town under police escort. Closing the track one morning so that Cigar could gallop in splendid isolation. The record Del Mar crowd of 44,181 packed like clams in the new grandstand. Then Dare And Go and Alex Solis upsetting the champ in a race for the ages (see video below), and winning trainer Richard Mandella making his way through the grandstand late in the day, signing autographs for the first time in his life.
(Bill Mott, despondent at Cigar’s loss, wanted only a comforting meal for his family after the races that day and sought directions to Fidel’s Mexican Cantina from a local turf writer. The directions were faulty, and they wandered the byways of Solana Beach for way too long, which did nothing for Mott’s mood. I will let you know when he has forgiven me.)
Dare And Go was a good horse, hardly a fluke, but nothing like his stablemate Gentlemen, the rugged South American who won the 1997 Classic, again for Mandella. Gentlemen was no match, however, in 1998 for the soaring gray Cal-bred Free House, who had hit the board in all three Triple Crown races two years earlier. He also supplied the Pulizter Prize-winning sports writer Jim Murray with grist for his final column.
“A Kentucky Derby can be a crapshoot,” Murray wrote. “Not a Pacific Classic. You win a Pacific Classic because you’re at the top of your game, not because eight other horses were still wet behind the ears. Many a Derby has been blown by an immature runner jumping shadows, spitting bits, lugging out, horsing around. Not a Pacific Classic. Here, the horses are all grown up, professional. These are the true class of the sport, older horses. Dependable, crafty. Consistent. They don’t beat themselves.”
Murray died of a heart attack the following day.
On marched the Classic. In 1999, John Mabee’s General Challenge, a leggy chestnut gelding endowed with more white than good sense, behaved long enough to become the first 3-year-old since Best Pal to win the Classic. In attempting to defend his crown a year later, General Challenge lost his rider, Corey Nakatani, due to a bad fall earlier on the card and was unresponsive to his Hall of Fame substitute, Laffit Pincay. The 2000 trophy instead went to Juddmonte’s Skimming (see video below), but the spotlight should have been on runner-up Tiznow, who went on to be Horse of the Year.
Skimming repeated in 2001, which gave Bobby Frankel his sixth win in the Classic’s first 11 runnings. Only six ran, prompting Del Mar president Craig Fravel to wonder aloud if that was all a million-dollar purse could get you. The following year, 3-year-old Came Home got home first in a field of 14, an otherwise exciting scrum marred by the fatal breakdown of the winner’s stablemate, Bosque Redondo, just past the finish.
Writers never should be part of the story, but in 2003 that was impossible. The victorious Candy Ride was ridden by this reporter’s wife, Hall of Famer Julie Krone.
The horse was purchased earlier in the year by Sidney Craig, on the recommendation of McAnally, for the specific purpose winning the Classic. Krone landed the mount because Gary Stevens was badly injured in the Arlington Million two weeks before the race. I watched the Classic with our family friend, John Stewart, the singer, songwriter, and former member of the Kingston Trio. On the night before the race, Stewart wrote a little ditty predicting Candy Ride’s track-record triumph over Travers and Whitney Handicap winner Medaglia d’Oro (see video below). You might say the stars were aligned.
Alex Solis would have ridden his second Classic winner in 2004 had he not fractured his spine the opening weekend of the meet. As it was, he watched from the rail, wearing a neck brace and a brave grin, as Jerry Bailey stepped in to win aboard Pleasantly Perfect.
The second horse that day was Perfect Drift, the gelding who carried a lock of John Henry’s tail beneath his saddle for good luck. It was enough to get him second again in 2005 in the middle of a four-horse cluster behind victorious Borrego, owned by Del Mar director Jon Kelly. Lava Man, third that day, returned in 2006 to be easily best under Nakatani, horse and rider winning their sixth straight race in the process, five of them Grade 1.
Del Mar’s synthetic main track experiment commenced in 2007, under a mandate from the California Horse Racing Board and full-throated enthusiasm from management. The Polytrack product that summer of 2007 tested both man and beast, as indicated by the ten-furlong time of 2:07.29 posted by Classic winner Student Council, under Richard Migliore. That was a full eight seconds slower than Candy Ride’s record run, but the $600,000 prize was just as sweet.
On August 23, 2008, Garrett Gomez won the Travers Stakes at Saratoga for WinStar Farm and trainer Eoin Harty, then hustled a seat back to the West Coast in a private jet with the winning party. Gomez said thanks for the ride, then the next afternoon went out and broke their hearts, getting Go Between home first by a neck in the Classic ahead of Well Armed and the hopes of WinStar and Harty. Bill Mott, the winning trainer, sent an assistant to do the honors, which was too bad. I had a reservation at Fidel’s and a limo ready and waiting.
Richard’s Kid, a fugitive from modest eastern competition, seemed like a fluke when he won the 2009 Classic for Arnold and Ellen Zetcher at 24/1. They sold him for a tidy profit, then watched him win the 2010 Classic in much the same fashion, coming from far back under Mike Smith for the new owner, Zabeel Racing.
Richard’s Kid clearly was a synthetic specialist, and the trend continued in 2011, when the turf ace Acclamation defeated the versatile Twirling Candy in a memorable jockey’s duel between Pat Valenzuela and Joel Rosario.
The 2012 Classic went to Dullahan, invading from Kentucky, and just good enough to beat the rising local star Game On Dude, whose rider, Chantal Sutherland, appeared to drop a rein nearing the win to give the race a footnote that made no difference in the outcome. Rosario, thwarted on Twirling Candy, was not about to lose again. As for Game On Dude, he returned in 2013 to win the Classic by 8 1/2 lengths, this time under Martin Garcia.
In 2014, the synthetic surface was removed – it was never consistent from year to year – and a golden era of Pacific Classics commenced.
Shared Belief, a son of Candy Ride, kicked things off with a sparkler in his first try at ten furlongs. A tidy, athletic champion at 2, Shared Belief beat fellow 3-year-old Toast Of New York and a gaggle of elders. (Two years later, after Shared Belief succumbed to a bout of colic, his remains were buried in a plot of honor at Del Mar.)
In 2015, the Classic belong heart and soul to the mare Beholder, who surprised even her trainer, Richard Mandella, with her 8 1/4-length tour de force under Gary Stevens. In 2016, Beholder returned to defend her crown, but she was no match for California Chrome, whose Classic romp (see video below) went a long way towards a second title as Horse of the Year.
Bob Baffert was supposed to win the 2017 Classic with Arrogate, the monster who beat California Chrome in the Breeders’ Cup Classic and brought the Dubai World Cup to its knees. Instead, the race went to the stable’s second stringer, Collected, a smart son of City Zip whose owner, Peter Fluor, went out of his way to apologize for the half-length upset of the odds-on favorite.
Even at his best, though, Arrogate may have been hard-pressed to handle 2018 Classic winner Accelerate, who won by a dozen lengths (see video below) and went on to take the Breeders’ Cup Classic at the end of the year for trainer John Sadler and Hronis Racing. And, just in case no one was paying attention, Sadler and the Hronis family won the Classic again in 2019 with Higher Power, a son of 2003 Classic runner-up Medaglia d’Oro, this time by only 5 1/2 lengths.
Last year, with travel thwarted by pandemic restrictions and racetracks reduced to television studios, the Pacific Classic provided a last hurrah for the benighted former 3-year-old champion Maximum Security.
Time will never erase his disqualification from winning the 2019 Kentucky Derby or the indictment of his first trainer, Jason Servis, on drug-related charges. But as an older racehorse he was respected, and his comfortable score at Del Mar gave replacement trainer Bob Baffert his record seventh victory in the Classic.
In November 2017, when the racing world convened at Del Mar, Pacific Classic winner Collected finished a respectable second to Gun Runner in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Gun Runner is a son of Candy Ride.
This year’s Pacific Classic was supposed to have drawn Dubai World Cup winner Mystic Guide, now retired, and Belmont Stakes runner-up Hot Rod Charlie, who has been targeted elsewhere, leaving the race wide open at the top. Whether or not the 2021 Classic results will tip the form for the Breeders’ Cup Classic to be run at Del Mar on November 6 remains to be seen, but that is not the point. John Mabee and his enablers intended their race to be its own reward, a beacon of excellence that elevated Del Mar’s traditional profile to national status.
Mission accomplished.