Santa Anita Off to Good Start as 44,579 Create a Buzz

Wow, what a crowd!

That’s one way to describe opening day of 75^th winter-spring meet.

“Perfect weather, perfect crowd, perfect racing, perfect day, perfect in every way” is how Santa Anita President George Haines described it.

They call Santa Anita the Great Race Place, and Monday it lived up to that billing. The buzz around the track was the size of the crowd, announced at 44,579.

It was the largest opening day crowd since 1994, when 46,906 jammed Santa Anita, and the first opening day crowd in excess of 40,000 since 2002. Last year, the opening day crowd was 34,268, which was the largest of the 2010-11 winter-spring meet.

Monday’s crowd could signal a possible racing resurgence, which would be good news for , as the city’s economy is so dependent on how the racetrack performs.

The Factor, trained by Bob Baffert, was supposed to win the day’s major attraction, the Grade I $300,000 Malibu Stakes, and he did in impressive fashion. The gray colt whose name was taking from Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News Channel show, “The Reilly Factor,” was the 5-2 favorite despite poor showings in his last two races.

Another favorite, Mr. Commons, won the Grade II $150,000 Sir Beaufort Stakes.

The surprise of the day came in the fourth race when an 80-l long shot won and paid $162.80. A $23 winner in the fifth race meant there were no Pick Six winners, resulting in a carryover of $148,184. The Pick Six pool on Thursday, the next day of racing at Santa Anita, should top $750,000 and mean another good crowd.

Of course nothing close to 44,579 will come out on a Thursday, but a crowd larger that last meet’s average attendance of 8,123 is likely, particularly if the weather holds up.

The record average attendance for the winter-spring meet is 35,247 back in 1946-47. As recently as 1986-87, a year before off-track satellite wagering came about, the average attendance was 30,014.

The largest single-day crowd ever at Santa Anita was 85,527 for the 1985 Santa Anita Handicap.

Legendary handicapper Gordon Jones, known as the Professor, has been coming to Santa Anita since 1942 when, as an 18-year-old freshman at Whittier College, he and a buddy skipped track practice and snuck into the track by jumping a hedge on the backside.

“This crowd is like a typical weekend crowd here back before the Lakers and Clippers and Kings and Ducks were around to cut into the sports entertainment dollar,” Jones said. “But there is more electricity and excitement in the air today because most of the people here at not used to the excitement a big crowd brings to racing.”

The weather and the fact that Monday was a holiday for most people contributed to the huge crowd. But there were other factors as well, as pointed out by Greg Avioli, the president and CEO of Santa Anita’s parent company, Frank Stronach’s racing division.

“A lot of credit goes to Chris Quinn, who became our vice president of sales and marketing in October. He is reaching out to a different audience, and that’s what we need,” Avioli said.

“We are not directing our marketing and advertising at Gary Dimkich,” Quinn said, referring to Arcadia resident and Santa Anita box owner whose family has been ardent racing fans for generations. “We are directing our marketing and advertising at your daughters.”

Quinn is using a combination of cutting edge technology and an outdoor billboard campaign to engage a younger audience. There are 20 “Follow Me to Santa Anita” billboards now in the L.A. market and Santa Anita is a part of the electronic billboard at Angel Stadium, right off the 57 Freeway in Anaheim.

“The total combined views and impressions from all of this is more than 30 million per month,” Quinn said.

Santa Anita, under Quinn’s guidance, is also reaching out to the Hispanic community. Evidence of that was the Mariachi band in the Turf Club’s unusually jammed-packed Chandelier Room.

Local dignitaries in the exclusive Director’s Room Monday included Arcadia Mayor Gary Kovacic and his wife Barb, Mayor Pro Tem Bob Harbicht and his wife Patsy, City Councilman Roger Chandler, who is recovering from recent shoulder replacement surgery, and City Manager Don Penman and his wife Debbie.

Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith, who rode Mr. Commons to victory in the Sir Beaufort Stakes, also rode Ismene to victory in the fillies’ division of the California Breeders’ Champions Stakes, the day’s first race.

Garrett Gomez was a winner aboard Got Even in the other installment of the California Breeders’ Stakes, which was run on the hillside turf course as the seventh race.

Asked about the crowd, Gomez said: “It means the world to me and to all of us to see this many people out here. Thoroughbred racing has been going through some tough times with the recession and it’s been tough for people to come out. I just rode a race off the hill and it’s unbelievable to see all those cars in the back lot. This place is jammed.”