Southern California, not known for tradition, has a rich and wonderful history in the world of horse racing. Santa Anita was built in1934 and they got it right. The track embraces the San Gabriel mountains, which loom in the forefront on an incredibly large piece of land by Southern California standards. Bob Baffert has called Santa Anita the most beautiful in the country.
From almost any angle, fans get a good view of the horses. Santa Anita is the Wrigley Field of horse racing. Fans can get just feet away from horses, jockeys, and trainers. Just how close? Fans yell out encouragement to their jockey as the horses pass out of the walking ring to go onto the track. If a horse rears in the walking ring, people have to scamper away. That's how close! I have been to other historic tracks like Churchill Downs and Saratoga and you can't quite get that same intimacy.
And what about the horses? And the great races that have taken place at Santa Anita? What a history! The statue of the great Seabiscuit stands as the first testament to that history. I have seen the brilliant Spectacular Bid, perhaps the greatest horse to ever look through a bridle according to his trainer, Bud Delp, win the Santa Anita Handicap under the legendary Bill Shoemaker. More history. Another Triple Crown winner, Affirmed, won the Santa Anita Handicap a different year. I remember trainer Laz Barrera remarking: “they can't beat Affirmed.” No they couldn't.
In the heady days of Santa Anita's past, where weekend crowds often topped 50,000 people, you would see everyone you wanted to know or maybe some you didn't want to know. They came from everywhere. They were everywhere. People on the walkway with the newspaper or the Racing Form. People studying the horses as they came onto the track. My dad would bribe the ushers with a win ticket so we could go upstairs on the biggest days. I saw the owners and trainers there. I stood in the walkway and there was Farrah Fawcett in her prime Charlie's Angels days standing next to George Hamilton, maybe four feet away from me. No big deal. One day, an inebriated Mickey Rooney came up to me, pulled some money out and asked me if I would go and place a bet for him. I was all of 14!
Other people. My dad's friend, unshaven, who drove a beat up car, always in tattered clothes, throwing away $2000 worth of tickets onto the floor at a time when houses only cost $25,000. Ten feet away was John Forsythe sitting in his box, not a hair out of place, just like on the television show: Dynasty. Trainer Charlie Whittingham walking by, always without an expression on his face, whether he had won the feature race or not. Usually he had won. Santa Anita was pure spectacle: of humans shining at one another. It was Kentucky Derby day every day. It was a little city where you would see your racetrack friends and cheer or commiserate together depending how your horse did. And then come back for more.
The greatest asset of Santa Anita is that it is always waiting to be discovered, again and again. While horse racing today has much more competition from other sports and other avenues of betting, it is still as it was, a spectacle of horses and people. While crowds are down from its halcyon past, I still see groups of the young new faces strolling in awestruck at what they have discovered. I still notice children mesmerized by seeing a horse just four feet away for the first time and think back to my first experience. The big days like opening day or the Santa Anita Derby are still magic. At the 2023 Breeder's Cup held at Santa Anita, I ran into a co-worker and her husband by chance who heard about the event and just came out rather innocently to see what it was all about. The husband exclaimed to me, beside himself with emotion, “Wow, this is like a giant party.”
–Armen Antonian
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