Del Mar Paddock © Zoe Metz Photo
DEL MAR’S 13TH BING CROSBY SEASON IS OFF AND RUNNING TODAY
It’s Opening Day at Del Mar. The start of the 13th Bing Crosby Season. The turf course is pristine, the main track is in top shape and the flowers and greenery are looking good in the paddock. It’s a day of celebration for horse players and a culmination of weeks of hard work by the people behind the scenes.
The days leading up to the Bing Crosby Season at Del Mar are always filled with a touch of anxiety. Unlike its big brother in the summer, the fall meet doesn’t have nearly 90 years of traditions and history to fall back on like the summer meet provides.
“This is the first time in three years we’re not hosting the Breeders’ Cup,” notes Del Mar racing secretary David Jerkens. “The fall meet generally has a different vibe. It’s more of a ship-in meet. There will probably be about 300 horses here for a majority of the meet, which allows for the trainers who are here to pretty much have their own racetrack.
The fall meet has come a long way since its inception in 2014 and it’s still growing, still building on a reputation as one of the premier race meets of the year.
“The fall meet I kind of take day by day,” Jerkens admits. “It’s not as patterned as the summer. You have a better idea of the path of how the summer falls into place. But the Bing Crosby meet there’s a lot of unknowns. It’s a guessing game. To make it work you need good weather and the horsemen to support it.”
What it has going for it is the turf racing. By this time of year most of the big east coast racetracks have abandoned turf racing for the year because of deteriorating weather conditions. Even when they do schedule turf racing back east, connections never know if those races will stay on the grass from one day to the next. That leaves the sunny west coast with a corner on the market. Outfits like Chad Brown, Brad Cox and Todd Pletcher generally don’t like surprises and when Del Mar writes a quality grass race it usually goes off as planned.
“Jonathan Thomas shipped in 25 horses,” Jerkens says. “I think you’re going to see a lot of out-of-town outfits the last week. I was in Kentucky for the Breeders’ Cup and just general feedback was positive. I think our local contingent in certain stakes races looks a bit stronger than last year but I’m encouraged by our stakes on the last week. They’re going to do well.”
The Bing Crosby Season came to be following the closure of Hollywood Park back in 2013. There were two months of racing dates available in California and when state officials asked Del Mar to assume a few weeks the fall meet was born. To help jump start the new meet, the seaside oval assumed many of the old Hollywood Park graded stakes races like the Matriarch, the Hollywood Turf Cup and the Hollywood Derby.
Then to distinguish the new meet from other Del Mar adopted a Hollywood theme, an homage to Bing and Hollywood Park. Racing officials created the Betty Grable Stakes that will run on Sunday and the Desi Arnaz and Bob Hope Stakes that run over the second weekend of the meet. There’s also the Cecil B. DeMille and the Jimmy Durante on closing weekend and let’s not forget today’s Opening Day feature, the Let It Ride Stakes, named after the popular horse racing movie from the ‘80s.
“We directly follow Santa Anita and they had a good fall meet,” Jerkens states. “I always like to start strong and build that momentum. We put some categories on Opening Day that filled well. The Let It Ride Stakes got good numbers.
“There’s more competition this fall,” Jerkens adds. “New York has changed some of its stakes races and they have the new facility (Belmont Park). Oaklawn Park is opening earlier (November 27) so there’s a little more competition on the calendar.”
The Bing Crosby Season is 13 days of quality racing spread out over the month of November. Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday of this month. Racing will start a bit earlier than during the summer. First post is 12:30 p.m and this year Thanksgiving racing returns. To accommodate everyone who wants to play the horses and not miss out on Thanksgiving dinner, post time on Thursday, November 26 is at 11 a.m.
2025 BING CROSBY WINNER LOVESICK BLUES BACK IN THE CHOSEN VRON
Saturday will be the second renewal of the The Chosen Vron, a seven-furlong test on the main track. Nine Cal-bred 3-year-olds and up have been entered in the race and it will mark the return of Lovesick Blues, an 8-year-old gelding who captured the 2025 G1 Bing Crosby, a race The Chosen Vron had won the prior two years.
The The Chosen Vron will be Lovesick Blues’ first race in over seven months. The last time we saw the son of Grazen race was in the Dubai Golden Shaheen at the end of March.
“The Dubai trip took a little bit out of him,” trainer Librado Barocio says. “I thought he was a little thin so we did the right thing and gave him time off and let him come back to himself and I think he’s ready to go and ready to campaign for another year.”
The last time Lovesick Blues ran at Del Mar was last fall when he ran in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint. After that Barocio took him overseas, first to Saudi Arabia to run in the Riyadh Dirt Sprint on the Saudi Cup undercard and then to Dubai.
“When he got back from Dubai he just wasn’t himself,” Barocio recalls. “He’s normally playful and rambunctious and always on the muscle. He just didn’t have that spirit in him and he looked skinny. The veterinarian here told me I should give him some time off so I sent him up to Katie Fisher’s farm and she did a tremendous job with him, kept him for about two months. When he came back I took my time with him”
Ironically the farm where Lovesick Blues recuperated, Kingfisher Farm in Solvang, is the same one The Chosen Vron now spends his days of retirement.
“It is a layoff so it’s a bit concerning for me,” Barocio notes. “But what I like is that it wasn’t a layoff for any injury. Two weeks ago, Juan Hernandez worked him and he worked tremendous (5f, 1:00.10 9/79) and even Juan said, ‘Oh my God, he worked so good.’ Then we tried to give him an easy breeze and he just outdid himself last week (5f, :59.60 4/46). I think he’s ready to go but you never know first time back.”
Lovesick Blues will have his hands full with at least a couple of top-notch Cal-breds in Man O Rose and Big City Lights.
Man O Rose was riding a five-race winning streak early this year before finishing third in the $100,000 Sensational Star at Santa Anita in March. Trainer Jeff Mullins gave the 6-year-old son of Stanford five months off and brought him back in the G2 Green Flash at Del Mar this past summer when he ran a disappointing last of eight horses.
Man O Rose returned to Cal-bred company in September at Los Alamitos and got back in the winner’s circle with a victory in the $75,000 E. B. Johnston.
Big City Lights spends as much time running in open company as he does with Cal-breds but when he does run with Cal-breds, he usually wins. Except for last time out in the $100,000 California Flag at Santa Anita when he ran fifth, with an excuse.
“We tried the turf again because it was Cal-bred,” says Gary Mandella assistant to his father Richard Mandella, “whereas before we tried him on the turf against open company. So, we gave it one more chance and he didn’t like it.”
The son of Mr. Big will be back on his favorite surface going one of his favorite distances.
“He’s better on dirt,” Mandella says. “That’s his sweet spot.”
Big City Lights is coming to the end of his 7-year-old campaign and Mandella says his future in racing hasn’t been decided.
For 11 years the The Chosen Vron Stakes was called the Cary Grant Stakes continuing with the Hollywood theme at Del Mar in the fall. Then along came The Chosen Vron, a sharp chestnut gelding who dominated the Cal-bred ranks for several years and became a fan favorite. At one stage of his career, he won 14 of 15 races, four of them at Del Mar. Adding to the allure was his very likable trainer, J. Eric Kruljac, whose love and admiration for his horse was palable.
When The Chosen Vron retired in 2025, Del Mar wanted to show it’s appreciation for the horse and re-named the race after him. It goes off as race eight on Saturday’s nine-race program. Probable post time is 4 p.m.
Here’s the field from the rail with the jockeys and morning line odds: Man O Rose (Edwin Maldonado, 3-1); Shady Tiger (Mike Smith, 20-1); Matt At Five (Hector I. Berrios, 12-1); Pure Madness (Armando Ayuso, 6-1); Big City Lights (Kazushi Kimura, 2-1); Special Club (Joel Rosario, 12-1); Lonesome Stew (Emisael Jaramillo, 6-1); Mr. Disrespectful (Tiago Pereira, 20-1), and Lovesick Blues (Juan Hernandez, 5-1).
REMEMBERING POPULAR HALL OF FAME JOCKEY DONALD PIERCE
Del Mar lost one of its legendary jockeys last month when Donald Pierce passed away at the age of 89. The winner of 3,546 races during his 31-year career that started in the late 50s and carried through the 60s and 70s, the Hall of Fame jockey always referred to Del Mar as his favorite track to ride.
Pierce was part of the highly contentious Southern California riding colony that included such luminaries as Bill Shoemaker, Johnny Longden and Eddie Arcaro. Later he went up against the likes of Chris McCarron, Laffit Pincay, Jr., and Eddie Delahoussaye.
Pierce won a total of 54 stakes races at Del Mar. Included on that list were four victories in the Del Mar Debutante, and three wins each in the Del Mar Derby and the Del Mar Oaks. He won virtually every major stakes race at Del Mar, from the San Diego Handicap to the Del Mar Futurity. Yet he only managed one riding title, in 1966, when he returned after a six-year absence and won 47 races.
Despite their rivalry on the track, Pierce and Shoemaker were very close friends during their riding careers and long after they retired from racing. The two often hung out together up in Arcadia and when they were riding at Del Mar. Sadly, Shoemaker was on his way to meet up with Pierce the night he crashed his car, an accident that landed Shoemaker in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
One of Pierce’s favorite stories to tell about Shoemaker involved the 1962 Santa Anita Handicap. Pierce, Shoemaker and a rider named Alex Maese were coupled together in a three-way entry. Often times jockeys in coupled entries would agree before the race to share the purse money regardless of the finish but this time Pierce was on a huge longshot so Shoemaker and Maese left him out of the arrangement.
Low and behold, Pierce wins the race and as they’re galloping out after crossing the finish line, Shoemaker rolls up alongside him and yells, “You’re in, Don, you’re in.”
Pierce lived in Encinitas after his riding days and was a regular at Del Mar. He was a clocker for several years at the seaside oval. You can see Pierce’s Hall of Fame plaque and his George Woolf Trophy on the wall just inside the Horsemen’s Lounge on the third floor of Del Mar’s Stretch Run.
When his health began to fail him about a year ago, Pierce moved to Denton, Texas to be near family. He’s survived by his brother, Larry; daughter, Connie Markum; two sons, Edward and Donald Jr.; five grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
WEEKEND HANDICAPPING SEMINARS BACK AT DEL MAR
Racing fans can once again take part in Del Mar’s Free Weekend Handicapping Seminars, held each Saturday and Sunday throughout the meet. They’ll be presented on the Kona Stage in the Plaza de Mexico and begin at noon each day in advance of the 12:30 p.m. first post.
The seminars, which run for approximately 20 to 25 minutes, offer insights into the day’s racing cards from expert handicappers.
Del Mar veteran Dan Smith is the host for the Saturday cards and his guest this week is Ellis Davis, the longtime chart caller for both Daily Racing Form and Equibase.
Sunday’s programs will be overseen by handicapping ace Frank Scatoni and he’ll have as his guest this week the noted Tournament Player Evan Topol.
COOLING OUT: Training activity picked up a bit Friday with several workers from the Peter Miller, Jonathan Thomas and Richard Mandella barns posting official workouts on the main track. They included Bits Tiger Magic (4f, :49.00); Truly Quality (5f, 1:01.00), and Zihnal (5f, :59.60).