DEL MAR : Stevens Brings Supporting Cast for This Meeting

DEL MAR —  When Ron and Gary Stevens get together, which should happen often this summer at Del Mar, they can eliminate voids in the conversation by simply comparing scars they’ve accumulated while in the company of horses.

Ron Stevens, the jockey’s 56-year-old father, has relatively new evidence of how dangerous horses can be. The latticework of scars starts near the top of his right arm and doesn’t end until it reaches the elbow.

“There’s a plate and eight screws in there,” he said. “A 2-year-old filly got me, back in Boise. This happened not long after I’d had a joint replaced in my knee, in November, and had a new joint put in my shoulder, in December. I bet if you X-rayed this arm now, it’d look like an erector set.”

Del Mar, which opens its 56th season today, is where Ron Stevens’ 32-year-old son experienced his worst riding accident.

In 1989, the meeting was almost over when a 3-year-old gelding dropped Gary on the turf course’s inner rail. The plastic piping was shattered into dozens of pieces, and one hit him between the eyes. He spent two days in the hospital, where cosmetic surgery repaired his face and a plate and four pins were inserted in his wrist.

He hasn’t won a riding title at the seaside course since, but he has been a presence. He has averaged almost six stakes victories a meeting during the 1990s, and last year, with 39 winners overall, he was second in the standings to Corey Nakatani, who rode 51 winners.

Stevens frequently launches his assault on the Del Mar stakes schedule with the opening-day Oceanside--last year, he won both divisions, with Powis Castle and Saltgrass--and today, with the one-mile grass race split again, he has live mounts in Private Interview for trainer David Hofmans and with Turbulent Dancer for Mike Mitchell.

Nakatani, who was second--five wins behind Kent Desormeaux--at Santa Anita this winter and then ran away with the Hollywood Park meet that ended Monday, is favored to repeat at Del Mar. Stevens won 12 races in the closing week at Hollywood Park and captured stakes races in July with Silver Wizard, Soul of the Matter, Private Persuasion, Thunder Gulch and Hennessy.

Ron Stevens is glad he is here. If he were back in Idaho, listening to the occasional phone call, he wouldn’t believe the details of his son’s derring-do.

The Ron Stevens stable at Del Mar is a two-horse outfit, although the veteran trainer, who had been campaigning at Yakima Meadows in Washington state, hopes to pick up a few more runners before the 43-day meet is over.

Gary rode one of his father’s horses at Hollywood Park, but wouldn’t have been able to take the assignment on the other one, Ask Pete, if the Yakima import had been ready to run in Monday’s Hollywood Juvenile.

“Gary’s too busy with that guy who gives him all those Kentucky Derby winners,” Ron said with a laugh.

That is trainer Wayne Lukas, who used the younger Stevens in both of his Derby victories, with Winning Colors in 1988 and Thunder Gulch this year. Stevens completed his stakes binge at Hollywood by riding the Lukas-trained Hennessy to victory in the Juvenile, the coda to a five-win day.

The day that their youngest son rode his first Derby winner, Ron and his wife, Barbara, were cheering him on at Churchill Downs.

“If you look closely at that Winning Colors winner’s circle picture,” Ron said, “you’ll see the top of my head and one of Barbara’s legs. That day was one of the highlights of my life.”

In 1979, just turned 16, Gary rode one of his father’s trainees to victory at Les Bois Park in Idaho, the first of about 3,800 wins.

Ten years before, his parents wondered if their son would ever walk normally. A sore leg was diagnosed as a degenerative hip-joint disease, which required a brace with an oversized shoe.

The determination that accompanies Stevens every time he boards a horse was already manifesting itself.

“He was supposed to wear that brace for three years, but they took it off in a year and a half,” Ron said. “Before he got rid of it, the other kids would try to give him a rough time. They’d tell him he looked like Frankenstein with that shoe. Gary wouldn’t have it. A kid only got the chance to say it to him once.”

This year, Stevens has been more of a money rider than the statistics show, because racing’s record keepers haven’t yet included about $1.15 million that his horses earned when he was temporarily based in Hong Kong during Santa Anita’s winter meet.

“Including Hong Kong, the purses-per-mount average is just incredible,” said Ron Anderson, Stevens’ agent.

Indeed, that ratio has been at the $13,500 level. Stevens, with more than 500 mounts, is pushing the $7-million mark counting purses in Hong Kong and the United States. Last year, when Mike Smith broke the money record with $15.9 million in purses, his per-mount average was $10,768.

Horse Racing Notes

The meet runs through Sept. 13. . . . Tuesdays are the only dark days, with twilight racing, starting at 4 p.m., on the first five Fridays. . . . Mike Mitchell has won four training titles at Del Mar, but none since 1984. Bill Spawr beat him out last year, 19-18. . . . Lake George, entered in the first division of the Oceanside, has won a one-mile grass allowance at Hollywood Park since finishing 18th in the Kentucky Derby. . . . Gold and Steel, winner of Sunday’s American Derby at Arlington International, is headed for trainer Rodney Rash’s barn and may run in the $300,000 Del Mar Derby on Sept. 4.