David Jerkens

Del Mar Thoroughbred Club outlined its fall stakes schedule consisting of 16 stakes worth $2,250,000 and will be presented through its 15-day Bing Crosby Season, beginning  Oct. 31. Del Mar has added a pair of California-bred sprint stakes for juveniles that were not on its agenda the past two seasons. Nine of the 16 fall stakes are graded; nine of the 16 stakes will be run on turf; seven of the stakes--all of them on grass--will be presented over the track's extended closing weekend which begins Thanksgiving Day, and continues...

Given events at Santa Anita in the spring, it was understandable that Del Mar racing secretary David Jerkens approached the track's annual summer meet with both hope and a certain amount of trepidation. In the end, the track achieved what Jerkens called "unprecedented"--the entire seven week, 36-card meet played out with zero race-day fatalities. That works out to 0 for 2,372 starts. Of the four catastrophic injuries sustained during morning training, two were the result of a freak accident involving a loose horse. It's important to note that these numbers...