Hughes © Benoit Photo
BEST PAL VICTOR POINTS TO FUTURITY; ‘RIBBON’ WINNER GOING HOME
Saturday was another day of thrilling stakes action at Del Mar. One race featured the top 2-year-old in the Bob Baffert barn and the other saw another Graham Motion invader stealing the nightcap.
The day’s stakes action started with the G3 Best Pal Stakes featuring five juveniles taking the first step toward bigger and better things. Hughes passed the six-furlong test with flying colors, fighting off one rival in a pace duel and then quickly shrugging off the co-favorite and drawing off to a convincing 7 ¾ lengths victory.
“It was beautiful,” Baffert said after the race. “He had been training well and we knew he had a lot of speed. Juan (Hernandez) got him into a good groove, a good flow. He’s always shown he was special.”
Hughes is a son of super sire Into Mischief. He gave Hernandez his fourth win in the Best Pal. It was Baffert’s first stakes win at Del Mar this summer extending his all-time record for stakes victories by a trainer at the seaside oval to 191. It was his 12th victory in the Best Pal and fifth in a row. He won it last year with Desert Gate.
Hughes reportedly came out of the race ‘very good’. The Best Pal is a local prep for the G1 Futurity on September 6.
“We love Del Mar,” Baffert exclaimed, “and now we’ll go on to the Futurity.”
Baffert was back in New York where an hour before the Best Pal he saddled Explora to a dominating five-length victory in the G1 Test at Saratoga. She was the runner-up in both of last year’s Del Mar Debutante and in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Del Mar. Baffert’s planning on staying over for the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Sale on Monday and Tuesday before heading back to Del Mar.
The second half of Del Mar’s graded stakes twin-bill was the G2 Yellow Ribbon for fillies and mares going a mile and a sixteenth on the grass. Trainer Graham Motion, who won the race last year with Heredia, shipped in Warming for the ‘Ribbon.’
The daughter of Global Campaign sat toward the back of the pack throughout the first half of the race and then came storming down the lane and got up in the shadow of the wire to win.
“She was nice and settled and was all class,” said Motion’s assistant trainer Alice Clapham after the race. “When he (Juan Hernandez) asked her go she changed leads and she just took off. I think the big thing is to get her to relax so nicely like that and it helps that she’s run a couple of times out here.”
Warming ran in the G3 Bayakoa at Del Mar last fall and also won at Santa Anita.
"I rode this filly in a stakes at Santa Anita and we won there (Gr III Autumn Miss),” Hernandez noted. “So I knew what to expect today. She broke a step slow, so I saved all the ground I could. They were going slow up front, but that was OK for me. The stable told me she was doing good and to ride her with confidence. She has a really good turn of foot and she showed it today."
It was Hernandez fifth stakes win at Del Mar and second of the day. He won three races Saturday to increase his lead in the jockey standings by four wins. He now has 70 stakes wins at Del Mar. It was Motion’s 13th stakes win at the seaside oval and third in two years. He won with Gimme a Nother in the 2025 G2 John Mabee.
Warming came out of the race in good order and will ship back to Motion’s home base at Fair Hill in Maryland on Tuesday. When she gets back home they’ll begin mapping out plans for her for the fall.
RACE FAVORITES DOING MUCH BETTER THIS WEEK AT DEL MAR
The pendulum is swinging the other way in terms of winning favorites at Del Mar. Saturday the first five races were won by the favorite and by the end of the day seven of the 10 races were won by the horse who was favored. Friday half of the card of eight races was won by the favorite. A far cry from the way things started at this meet.
It had been a brutal summer for chalk players at Del Mar. Prior to last Sunday’s races the percentage of winning post-time favorites was down to 17.53%.
“I’ve been doing this for 40 years in Southern California,” says Kurt Hoover the host of Del Mar’s pre-race handicapping segment. “I don’t ever remember it being that low, never.”
The normal rate nationally is between 33 to 35%. Despite the uptick of winning favorites, the percentage is still at 27.82% going into Sunday’s races.
That’s a tick higher than the lowest of lows ever recorded at Del Mar. Back in 1955, the seaside track posted its lowest percentage of winning favorites ever. Through 40 days of racing and 329 races, only 83 favorites made it to the winner’s circle, a 25% clip.
Some 34 years later, in 1989, Del Mar conducted 43 days of racing and ran a total of 387 races. That year 100 favorites won, a 26% clip. Then in 2017, 26.7% of the favorites won at the summer meet when they conducted 318 races over 36 days.
Ironically, the lowest percentage of winning favorites at a meet at Del Mar came the year after the highest ever was recorded. In 1954, 144 favorites came in first out of 337 races. That was and still is a record for the track at 43%. That was the year Bill Shoemaker won 94 races. Shoemaker moved his tack back east the following year which might explain the sudden drop in winning favorites since handicappers no longer had the jockey they could rely on for a sure thing.
Twice in recent years the record has been threatened but not broken. In both 2023’s fall meet and at last year’s summer session, 42.5% of the winning favorites won.
“I think it was just an aberration,” Hoover says of the slow start for winning favorites at the current session. “I guarantee it will end up around 33% when it’s all said and done. I think it was just a small sample size and just the start of the meet.”
DEL MAR SERVES UP THREE MORE STAKES RACES NEXT WEEKEND
If the Pacific Classic weekend in two weeks is the feast, then next weekend’s stakes action is the tantalizing appetizer. Three stakes are on the docket at Del Mar; one is graded and two have returning champions.
Saturday’s stakes doubleheader features the $150,000 Solana Beach, a one-mile affair on the Jimmy Durante turf course and the $100,000 CTT & TOC Stakes for long distance grass runners. Sunday is the 55th running of the G3 Rancho Bernardo Stakes.
The Solana Beach is for Cal-bred fillies and mares and will feature Grand Slam Smile, winner of the race last year. The Cal-bred champion as a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old is one of the 13 nominations to the race that includes Can’t Sleep, runner-up in last month’s $100,000 Daisycutter Handicap at Del Mar, and Take Another Card, runner-up to Grand Slam Smile in the $100,000 Fran’s Valentine at Santa Anita in May.
Saturday’s card will also feature the 29th edition of the $100,000 CTT and TOC Stakes. Sixteen fillies and mares have been nominated for one of the longest stakes races of the summer meet at a mile and three-eighths on the grass. It’s considered a local prep for the G2 Del Mar Handicap, which is run August 29 also at the 1 3/8’s mile distance. The top three finishers in the $100,000 Possibly Perfect at Santa Anita in June (Kentucky Gal, Innovative, The Mizzen Queen) were separated by just a nose and a head. They’re all nominated to the CTT and TOC.
Sunday it’s back to the graded stakes action at Del Mar as Sweet Azteca returns to defend her title in the Rancho Bernardo Stakes. The 6-year-old daughter of Sharp Azteca has won the past two runnings of the six-furlong sprint, both times dominating the field. Trainer Richard Baltas has designs on a Breeders’ Cup for Sweet Azteca and the Rancho Bernardo will act as a steppingstone to the big races at Keeneland in the fall. Nine fillies and mares are nominated for Sunday’s race including Magnificat, runner-up last out to Sweet Azteca in the G2 Great Lady M at Los Alamitos.
Entries for Saturday’s stakes will be drawn today. Entries for the Rancho Bernardo will be drawn Wednesday.
BRANT 2025 DEL MAR FUTURITY WINNER RETIRED FROM RACING
Brant, the winner of last year’s Del Mar Futurity, has been retired from racing. The 3-year-old colt, who was purchased by Saudi businessman Amr Zedan for $3 million dollars as a 2-year-old, will stand at Hill ‘n Dale in Xalapa in 2027.
The son of Gun Runner was highly touted even before he stepped in the starting gate. His seven-figure sale price brought the young colt instant attention. He then went out and won at first asking at Del Mar in July of 2025 posting a 101 Beyer Speed figure. He followed that performance with the Futurity victory, beating stablemate Desert Gate.
Brant’s next race was the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile when he finished third behind Ted Noffey and Mr. A.P. But as a 3-year-old Brant failed to flash his earlier form, finishing fifth in the G2 San Felipe, his lone try on the Derby Trail, and then a non-threatening fourth in the G3 Maxfield at Churchill Downs in June.
Brant retires with $424,400 in earnings.
A FIRST FOR DEL MAR’S TRACK ANNOUNCER LARRY COLLMUS
Larry Collmus has done and seen a lot of things in horse racing. So, when something comes along that Larry hasn’t done yet, it’s worth noting. Last Sunday he got to call a race with a horse in it that was named after him. Collmus, the horse, went off the 4/5 favorite in the field of five maidens. He finished fourth.
To hear Collmus tell the story, he was approached by owner Amr Zedan one day. The Saudi Arabian businessman was wondering why Santa Anita announcer, Frank Mirahmadi, had a horse named after him, but Larry didn’t. So, Zedan arranged for his trainer, Bob Baffert, to cull three horses from his herd and Collmus chose the one to be named after him.
Unfortunately, the 5-year-old son of Gun Runner has been dealing with a series of injuries over the years and last Sunday was his racing debut.
“It was fun calling a horse named after me,” Collmus said after the race. “Wish we had run better.”
Collmus is into his third summer calling the races at Del Mar. His first was the year of Covid when Del Mar track announcer Trevor Denman chose to stay home in Minnesota. Collmus would return to call the races in the fall of that year and has done so every year since.
“I’ve learned some short cuts,” Collmus jokes. “I’m getting around alright.”
It’s a well know fact that Collmus has some side jobs during the months that Del Mar is not running. He calls the Kentucky Derby for NBC as well as the other two legs of the Triple Crown. He’s also the voice of the Breeders’ Cup. It’s afforded him the opportunity to be apart of some very significant days and events in horse racing, but none bigger than the one in 2015.
“It’s not even close,” Collmus says when asked what his biggest moment in racing has been. “It’s American Pharoah winning the Triple Crown. To be a part of that and be the guy that got to narrate it was pretty special. It was kind of an out-of-body experience.”
Collmus says there were signs leading up to the race that convinced him this might be the day the Triple Crown drought of 37 years would be broken.
“The night before I went out to dinner with Tom Hammond and Donna Brothers,” Collmus states, “and Penny Chenery came over and hung out with us for a little while. I just got this feeling, ‘I’m with the owner of Secretariat, this is going to happen.’”
Premonition aside, Collmus says the priority that day was simple.
“Just don’t screw it up,” he said he told himself before the race. “Get it right and it worked out fine.”
It became one of the greatest race calls of all time.
Whether it’s the Kentucky Derby or a Thursday of racing at Del Mar, Collmus puts in a good amount of preparation for the races.
“I color in the silks,” Collmus says as he looks over his program sheet, “so I have an idea of what they’re going to look like when they come out onto the track and that kind of helps me. I’ll look at the PP’s to see what the horses have done. What the speed might be. Who the closers might be. On an eight-race card during the week it’s going to take me about an hour (to prepare), the weekend card an hour and a half.”
It’s a job that abuses your short-term memory.
“It’s like taking a test every half hour,” Collmus states. “You get the names in your head and then you have to forget them. You don’t want to have a horse you called with similar silks in the next race and call them again. So, you have to wipe the slate clean. I need to forget what I just learned.”
He says the years of experience have taught his brain to do what needs to be done. It’s not a technique or something Collmus conscientiously does after every race.
“Everybody’s got a bet on every race and everybody owns a horse in every race so you want to put on the best call that you can. When three horses are across the track and they’re bobbing heads, even if it is a lower-class race, it’s still exciting. It’s hard not to get fired up over.”
You can sit-in on one of Larry’s patented race calls. Actually, go up to the booth on the roof of the Del Mar grandstand and watch Collmus do his thing. All the while you’ll be contributing to a great cause, Carma, the California Retirement Management Account, which helps find homes for retired racehorses.
A $200 donation gets you a front row seat for one of Collmus’ race calls.
“I meet them out on the roof and we take pictures and chat for a while,” Collmus explains. “I’ll bring them into the booth and show them how I get prepared to call a race. Then they watch me call the race.”
It’s a great behind-the-scenes experience.
“In three ways it’s good,” Collmus notes. “People get to see how it works up there. I get to meet people I would have necessarily never met and CARMA gets the proceeds.”
If you’d like to participate, you can call the ticket office at 858-792-4242 or go online at DMTC.com/tickets.
COOLING OUT: Reddam Racing and owner Paul Reddam continue to run up the victories at Del Mar this summer. He had two more winners on Friday lifting his victory total to seven at the meet. His closest competitors are Harris Farms and Hronis Racing with three wins…Jockey Yedsit Hazlewood will make his Del Mar debut today when he rides the favorite Ruiva in the G3 Sorrento. That’s Race 6. Probable post time is 4:30 p.m. Hazlewood is a young riding phenom back in Maryland where he won the Laurel Park winter meet riding title while still an apprentice. He lost his bug in June…Put Hollywood Gold Cup winner Forged Steel back on the list of ‘possibles’ for this year’s Pacific Classic at Del Mar. Saturday trainer Saffie Joseph, Jr. scratched Forge Steel from his intended start in the G1 Whitney at Saratoga. He indicated he might send the horse west for the Classic. He had also mentioned running another one of his horses, Navajo Warrior, in Del Mar’s marquee race. He did not say if he now intends to send them both or just Forged Steel…Notable works on Sunday: Dirt – Cabo Spirit (4f, :48.60); Inshallah (4f, :47.00); Shea Brennan (4f, :47.60); Stronghold (4f, :49.20); Sweet Azteca (4f, :46.60); Iron Man Cal (5f, :59.20); Proletariat (5f, 1:00.00): Vodka Vodka (5f, 1:01.40), and Full Serrano (6f, 1:11.60). Turf – Almendares (4f, :51.20); Can’t Sleep (4f, :48.00); Gold Phoenix (4f, :51.40); Motorious (4f, :52.20); Mr. A. P. (4f, :49.00); Sumter (4f, :47.00); Thought Process (4f, :49.20); Ag Bullet (5f, 1:02.00), and King of Gosford (5f, 1:02.60). A total of 210 horses put in official works at Del Mar on Sunday: 178 on the main track and 32 on the Jimmy Durante Turf Course.