Horse Racing

The Baghdad Equestrian Club is proud of its illustrious past, the decades spent playing host to high-strung horses and the Baghdad Derby, with its silver cup for the winner. These days, stray dogs crawl around its dusty brown track, and children in shorts run through the dirt. Men in coffee-stained robes and the occasional John Deere cap slam down beers, puff cigarettes and take the name of Allah in vain. But beneath its seedy veneer, the racetrack is one of the city's miracles.

As opening days of race track meetings go, Wednesday's Oak Tree at Santa Anita was a huge success for star jockey Rafael Bejarano. No, he didn't win the feature, the $100,000 Grade III Morvich. That went to California Flag, the 5-year-old of Keith and Barbara Card, a front-running gelding who did the same thing last year and won another spot in the Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint. And no, Bejarano, the 27-year-old from Peru, who was so good last year that he placed first in the jockey standings of all five Southern California thoroughbred meets, didn't even win a race.

The San Gabriel Mountains were glistening on a picture-perfect day for racing at Santa Anita on Saturday, but an injury to the card's biggest name, Grazen, brought a stunned silence to the Arcadia track on California Cup day. As the horses turned into the stretch for the 1 1/8 -mile $200,000 California Cup Classic, odds-on favorite Grazen was beginning to pull away to an expected victory. Then jockey Garrett Gomez pulled up the 3-year-old just past the eighth pole. Another entrant, Blackbriar, had been pulled up moments earlier.

With Rachel Alexandra taking the rest of the year off, Zenyatta is now the unanimous first lady of horse racing. Maybe she would be anyway. Now, we will never know. When the monster mare from trainer John Shirreffs' barn went to the gate at Santa Anita's Oak Tree meeting Saturday in the $300,000 Grade I Lady's Secret, there was much at stake. There was also minimal drama as to the outcome. Just before the gate opened, there was nearly $190,000 bet on track for Zenyatta to win. Next closest was Coco Beach, with $35,000.

Forget about a European invasion for next month's Breeders' Cup at Santa Anita. It's more likely to be a stampede after the lightly raced 3-year-old Gitano Hernando showed up from England on Saturday and came away victorious against Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird and top older horses in the Grade I, $350,000 Goodwood Stakes. To say that Gitano Hernando loves the synthetic surface would be an understatement. He set a track record for 1 1/16 miles in his last race at Wolverhampton on Polytrack, was shipped to Santa Anita and relished the Pro-Ride, winning the 1 1/8 -mile Goodwood by a neck over Colonel John as an 18-1 longshot, with Richard's Kid finishing third.

The price tag on racehorses -- starting at a few thousand and rising steeply from there -- is only a beginning. These finely tuned animals need to be housed, fed, trained and, much like children, kept in new shoes. It is a perfectly sunny afternoon at Santa Anita Park, and Peter Lurie is watching the races, scribbling notes between quick bites of lunch, telling the story of how he came to own his first thoroughbred. After a lucrative year as a voice-over actor, Lurie needed a tax write-off.

A casual horse player's guide to parimutuel wagering, especially as it pertains to the Breeders' Cup World Championships on Friday and Saturday at Santa Anita. . . . The money trail First-time track-goers may wonder where their money goes. Parimutuel wagering is different from regular sports betting, in which the house (a bookie or legal sports book) generally takes a 10% cut referred to as juice. At the track your wager is like a stock transaction: A $2 bet ticket buys a share in the horse's performance.

Death is a sad but common part of thoroughbred racing, but in California the sight of medical vans on racetracks was a grim reminder that this state had problems far greater than others. In May 2006, the California Horse Racing Board, whose job it is to ensure fair and safe racing in the state, identified the dirt surface as a problem. It mandated that all the main thoroughbred tracks install what was believed to be a much safer synthetic surface by the end of the following year.

With the Southern California horse racing scene still buzzing after the performance of unbeaten Zenyatta in last weekend's Breeders' Cup Classic at Santa Anita, Hollywood Park opens its 27-day autumn racing season today, and the focus will be on identifying 2-year-olds who could be Kentucky Derby candidates. Trainer John Sadler could have the most intriguing prospect in Sidney's Candy, who set a Del Mar record for 5 1/2 furlongs in his second start in August, then dropped out of training because of bucked shins.

In Summation, a very consistent 4-year-old, picked up where he left off on the first day of 2008 Tuesday at Santa Anita. An unlucky loser when second to Bushwacker, who some argue should have been disqualified for drifting out in the stretch in the Vernon O. Underwood on Dec. 2 at Hollywood Park, In Summation had a dream journey in winning the $108,900 El Conejo Handicap.