DEL MAR : From the Paddock to the Wire, Fans to Find New Look Today

DEL MAR —  At a party at the Del Mar Race Track the other night, John Mabee was beaming.

Mabee, the chairman of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, which operates the race meeting here, had consigned eight yearlings at Keeneland. They had sold for an average of about $500,000, close to double what the average horse brought at the Kentucky auction.

On the in-house television monitors, they were running a tape of this month’s Hollywood Gold Cup, in which Mabee’s Best Pal returned to the form that has accounted for $4.4 million in purses.

And Mabee was standing on the second floor of the completely remodeled Del Mar track, which opens its 54th season today.

“This was long overdue,” Mabee said, referring to an $80-million project that was done in stages over the last two years. “For the last 20 years, the place had been gradually falling apart.”

During the early part of the reconstruction, a forklift got away from its operator and slammed into a grandstand wall, piercing the plaster. The operator feared that he had also shattered a large support beam on the inside. Looking in, he discovered that termites had feasted on the beam for years and had worked their way up past his eye level.

The old Del Mar might have been creaky and chewed up, but with the introduction of off-track betting in 1988, it became the business leader, moving ahead of Santa Anita and Hollywood Park and every other track in the country. This, despite seven-week seasons. Last year, even though betting was off 1% and attendance dropped 4 1/2% from the year before, Del Mar’s overall daily averages of 35,384 and $7.6 million were the highest anywhere.

The recession, and competition from nearby Indian gaming, had more to do with Del Mar’s slight dip last year than, say, the size of the new pillars in the grandstand, which prompted complaints because they affected sight lines. The reconstruction project has been finished a year ahead of schedule and Del Mar officials are confident that the public will be more appreciative of the entire face lift than they were of the partly finished work of a year ago.

When horsemen heard that the architects were going to tinker with the old paddock, they groaned. One of the distinctive features of the track was the Spanish mission-style paddock.

But not many fans could see the horses. The paddock has been moved east, enlarged and surrounded with balconies and railed, elevated viewing stands. Schooling of horses in the new paddock has been a priority for many trainers in recent days.

The new six-story Del Mar is about twice the size of the one that Bing Crosby, Pat O’Brien and their partners opened in 1937. The number of seats has increased by 5,000 to 14,300 and there is now room for crowds of more than 40,000, a figure that would have been impossible before. Crowds that size seldom materialize in this era of off-track betting, but Del Mar’s expansion makes the track a candidate for the Breeders’ Cup races in the next available year, 1997.

Highlighting opening day is a split feature, 11 horses running in each division of the Oceanside Stakes for 3-year-olds on grass. The Oceanside has been one of Del Mar’s most popular races, overflowing at the entry box in 10 of the last 15 years and today it will be split for the fifth consecutive time.

After Kent Desormeaux won a division of the Oceanside last year with Blacksburg, he added eight more stakes and totaled 68 winners, earning his first Del Mar title. Many of his winners were horses trained by Bob Hess Jr., who is trying to win a third consecutive title, a feat last achieved by Bobby Frankel during a four-year run in 1975-78.

Desormeaux, who won the Hollywood Park title with 86 victories, is riding Hess horses in both halves of the Oceanside. Both are European colts making their U.S. debuts. Guide, who is entered in the opener, has won twice in France this year at a mile, today’s distance, and Nominator has had a busy career in England, having won four and run second nine times in 22 starts. This year, however, he is winless in four races, the most recent a ninth-place finish in the Two Thousand Guineas, one of the races in England’s Triple Crown.

Eddie Delahoussaye has swept split Oceansides twice, in 1981 and 1985. Delahoussaye hasn’t previously ridden either of his mounts for today. Golden Slewpy, winner of his last two starts at Hollywood Park, will be making his stakes debut. Perfect Halo has won his only two starts, as a 2-year-old in England, and today’s race will be his first in 13 months.

Del Mar’s most important races don’t come until later. Flawlessly probably will attempt a repeat victory in the Ramona Handicap on Aug. 7; Kotashaan, winner of the San Juan Capistrano at Santa Anita, is expected to return from a layoff to run in the Eddie Read Handicap on Aug. 8, and Best Pal and Missionary Ridge, who have won the first two runnings of the Pacific Classic, might meet in the $1-million stake on Aug. 21. Missionary Ridge is a probable for Saturday’s $125,000 San Diego Handicap.

The meet will end on Sept. 15 with the Del Mar Futurity, which has been shortened from a mile to seven furlongs. That’s fine with trainer Brian Mayberry, whose Futurity candidate, Ramblin Guy, won the Hollywood Juvenile on closing day Monday at Hollywood Park.

“I’ve always said that too many young horses are asked to run too far too early,” Mayberry said.

Horse Racing Notes

The racing schedule is Wednesday through Sunday. First post is 2 p.m., except on Aug. 21, when the races will start at 1. . . . Blaze O’Brien and Alnasr Alwasheek will carry high weight of 120 pounds apiece in Thursday’s feature, the $60,000 Wicker Handicap. Others entered in the one-mile turf race are Native Boundary, Finder’s Fortune, Slew Of Damascus, Myrakalu and Idle Son. . . . Thirty Slews, who won the Bing Crosby Handicap last year and went on to win the Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Florida’s Gulfstream Park in October, is a probable for this season’s Crosby, which will be run on Sunday. . . . Last year, 36% of the races were won by favorites, the highest percentage since 1979. Del Mar has moved the finish line, which will make the stretch 919 feet long, 87 feet longer than last year. . . . Lil E. Tee, winner of the 1992 Kentucky Derby, is expected to be retired after suffering a hairline fracture in his right foreleg.