Del Mar is fast out of the gate

From Del Mar — There was a traffic jam at a horse race Wednesday. It took some people hours to get in. It was real Carmageddon, not some overdone media concoction.

It was wonderful.

Del Mar opened and they came. The attendance was 46,588. That was the largest crowd in Del Mar history, topping last year’s opening day 45,309.

There is a trend here, and racing traditionalists may not like it. But racing traditionalists will be building little new tradition the way their sport is going, with weekday crowds averaging around 2,500 at places such as Santa Anita and Hollywood Park, places that used to be magnets for sports fans.

Del Mar was that kind of magnet Wednesday. Opening day here has become more ritual than racing.

Mr. Commons, a nice turf horse expected to do well in the featured $100,000 Oceanside Stakes, did exactly that, circling the field on the home turn and smoothly kicking past the field. He had been a disappointing eighth in the Preakness, after just falling shy of earning enough money to make the 20-horse Kentucky Derby field.

“He was green in the Preakness,” said John Shirreffs, his trainer. “He got dirt kicked in his face and got trapped behind a couple of horses.”

But Mr. Commons’ victory, nice as it was, was far from the story of the day. The story was that, once again, Del Mar turned into a rollicking party on opening day. You might say there was more hat than horse.

They hold a fancy hat contest on opening day, and over the years it has become the excuse for women to dress to the nines and take over the place. It has become one of the biggest outdoor cocktail parties in the country. The hats are mostly outrageous and occasionally creative. The material worn below the hats might be loosely described as dresses. Hats aside, this might be the country’s biggest display of expensive plastic surgery.

The winning hat was made out of a surfboard, with a starting gate drawn on it. That somehow remained atop a head long enough to be judged. Other hat contenders were a shipwreck with a skeleton and a 6-foot seahorse.

Hard to believe that shipwreck one got beat. Olympic gymnastics judges and Del Mar hat judges are hard to figure.

Wednesday was a day when lines at the betting windows were long, and lines at the ladies room were longer. It was a day when tipsy females in 6-inch stiletto heels wobbled past pictures of Bing Crosby and asked their companions, “Who’s that?”

It was such a total ladies day that two female jockeys, Chantal Sutherland and Kayla Stra, won races. That had never happened before on one racing card at Del Mar.

While there may be some grumbling by the traditionalists about this kind of circus breaking out on a race day, Del Mar chief executive Joe Harper was making no apologies.

Nor should he.

“We are exposing lots of people to racing that we wouldn’t normally see before,” he said. “We are making new fans for racing, or at least for Del Mar.”

The numbers, like the dresses, were quite revealing.

The total handle on track — the amount of money bet on site at Del Mar — increased a startling 9.47% over last year, to $4,174,139. Programs sold out earlier than ever before and the food and beverage people reported $1.5 million in sales, best ever. One veteran reporter observed that the bulk of that was beverage.

A certain numbness appeared to encompass the over-served crowd by feature-race time, and it was back to racing on center stage.

Mr. Commons, who paid $4.20, $3.60 and $2.60, held off Patrick Valenzuela on Burns and Garrett Gomez on Extensive. That brought the familiar scene near the winner’s circle of Shirreffs reaching up to shake jockey Mike Smith’s hand. The two had combined for victories with the legendary Zenyatta in 16 of 17 races, including three times here in the Clement Hirsch Stakes.

For veteran jockey Smith, it was a smooth start to a meeting that may get bumpy.

On Aug. 7, he has agreed to a match race against his former girlfriend, Sutherland, who has remained in Southern California to race for the first time, skipping the summer-fall meeting at Woodbine in Toronto, where she has been leading rider several times.

The race, a promotional gimmick titled “Battle of the Exes,” might look like fun, until you hear from Sutherland.

“They haven’t chosen the horses for it yet,” Sutherland told a TV reporter, “but I rode a horse called Ex Lover and there’s one called Liarliarliar. I’m hoping I would ride Ex Lover and Mike would ride Liarliarliar.”

Picture another ladies day at Del Mar that Aug. 7. Picture thousands saluting him with empty ring fingers.

The fun never stops where the turf meets the surf.

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