Sun Shines Brightly on Santa Anita

“is as beautiful as any track on earth. Every shot of its majestic mountain backdrop and its elegant paddock, populated by high-class thoroughbreds, evokes the grandeur of the sport.”

No, the above was not written by the Santa Anita Park publicity director Mike Willman or anyone in his department. It was in the lead paragraph of a recent review of the new , written by esteemed horse racing columnist Andrew Beyer of the Washington Post in reference to the site where much of the series was filmed.

Beyer’s description is particularly fitting since, relatively speaking, these are the glory days for Arcadia’s legendary race track. And that was epitimized this past weekend.

Saturday was , and what a day it was. It drew a crowd of 30,514 and included a food truck festival and a beer festival in the infield, beautiful women everywhere—including Miss California—entertainment, a bikini contest, a fascinator and fedora contest, a beach chair giveaway, and teen sensation Megan Nicole singing the national anthem and “God Bless America.” 

Oh, yeah, there was some pretty good horse racing too, featuring a 10-race card with fives stakes and purses totaling nearly $1 million.

An unknowing person might have thought Sunshine Millions meant that under the warm Southern California sunshine it was a million-dollar day at Santa Anita. Although it was a near-perfect day, Sunshine Millions is a promotional concept thought up by Frank Stronach, the principle owner of several racetracks, including Santa Anita and Florida’s Gulfstream Park.

Stronach’s idea was to create a rivalry between horses bred in California and horses bred in Florida, officially known as the Sunshine State. The first Sunshine Millions was held in 2003, with Santa Anita and Gulfstream each staging a $1 million Sunshine Classic and three additonal stakes racing, making the total eight stakes races at the two tracks.

The format never really took off as Stronach envisioned, and California owners decided not to go to the expense of shipping horses to Florida this year. So the head-to-head competition is off. The format now has California-bred horses racing at Santa Anita and Florida-bred horses racing at Gulfstream. The joint promotion continues because Sunshine Millions has become a good brand.

Evidence of that was all the promotions at Santa Anita Saturday.

Food Trucks Fill Infield

There were 50 food trucks in the infield, including the Grilled Cheese Truck, the Lobsta Truck and many more. And fans also had their choice of 20 different brands of beers. A nice touch was the presence the Helpful Guys in Blue, who are part of a PR campaign by Southern California Honda dealers. They handed out water and hand sanitizer, took photos and picked up trash.

At the entrance gates, some 14,000 beach chairs were given away to Thoroughbred Club members and to those who signed up for Santa Anita’s free loyalty rewards program. The giveaway resulted in 1,400 new members who will now get direct alerts to future promotions.

Also taking place Saturday was the unveiling of the revamped Horse Wizard room in the Grandstand area. It is now called the Luck Lounge and features pictures of the show's cast.

Some of the attractive young women at the track were there for the bikini contest or the Fascinator hat contest, but many of them were invited by Vox, an event management and production company now being used by Santa Anita.

The fashionable dressed women brightened up the Chandelier Room in the Turf Club, which was bustling like the old days. Vox also had photographer Bryony Shearmur there taking free pictures for customers in front of a large Santa Anita placard.

Miss California, Noelle Freeman of Carlsbad, a recent Chapman University graduate, was in the Winner’s Circle for the trophy presentation after the fifth race, the $100,000 Chrystal Water Stakes, won by Holladay Road.

“It made sense to have Miss California here,” said Chris Quinn, Santa Anita’s new marketing chief who has been largely responsible for the recent uptick. “We were featuring Cal-breds, and what better Cal-bred is there than Miss California?”

Her appearance was arranged through Mike Senyo of Brener-Zwikel Public Relations.

Also in the Winners’ Circle after the fifth race was actor John Ortiz, who in Luck plays a trainer loosely based on real-life trainer Julio Canani. Fittingly, Holladay Road’s trainer is Canani, who posed for a picture with Ortiz and Wendy Broad, who along with husband Gary Broad, owns Holladay Road.

Other cast members on hand were Kerry Condon, who plays an exercise rider, and Ritchie Coster, who is one of the four degenerate gamblers on the series, which made its Sunday night.

The feature race of the day was the Grade 1 $300,000 Santa Monica Stakes, won by Home Sweet Aspen. This horse’s principle owner is weight-loss guru Jenny Craig.

Sunday was another beautiful day at Santa Anita, highlighted by one of the West Coast's best female turf horses, Unzip Me, winning the featured Wishing Well Stakes.

Quinn, asked if there were too many promotions for one day, conceded that is a possibility. But he also said, "At a place where there is gambling, you don't often see many smiling faces. It was great seeing so many smiling faces around here. Our aim is to make it fun to go to the races at Santa Anita, and Saturday in particular was a fun day."