Gervinho and Rising Legend were deemed to be in fine shape
the morning after their strenuous winning efforts in the Oceanside Stakes.
Hopefully the same could be said for the 43,030 people who assembled on-track
and made Del Mar’s opening day of the 74th summer racing season as festive as usual.
A string of eight straight years of larger opening-day
crowds, and four straight of track-record proportions, was broken. But the fact
that it was the largest crowd of the year at a California track, the weather was
perfect and handle numbers were up from 2012 both on-track (2.5 percent) and
from all-sources (4 percent) meant for smiles all the way around.
“Any time we get over 40,000 in here, I can’t complain,”
said Joe Harper, Del Mar Thoroughbred Club (DMTC) president and CEO. “It was a
lot easier operating this year. We limited the sales in the high-end area of the
Turf Club, and I think that made a difference.”
Time off and/or one prep race may have made the difference
for both Gervinho and Rising Legend in close finishes in divisions of the
Oceanside.
Gervinho took the first division by a neck over Greeley
Awesome in 1:33.88 for the mile on turf. The margin was a head for Rising Legend
over a fast-closing Gabriel Charles in 1:33.96 in the second division.
It was the second start of 2013 for Gervinho, trained by Carla Gaines and owned by former California Horse Racing
Board Chairman Keith Brackpool. The Unusual Heat colt’s first starts came as a runner-up
effort in the June 13 Silky Sullivan at Golden Gate Fields, also a one-mile turf race.
“We were pointing for this race when we brought him back,” Gaines said. “The
race at San Francisco, he definitely needed the start. But it set him up for
(the Oceanside), it really did. He beat a tough field and the time was really
good.”
Thursday morning, Gaines said Gervinho was fine and the
next race in the Del Mar three-year-old series, the Grade 2, $150,000 La Jolla Handicap on August 10, was a possible next start.
Trainer John Sadler said initial indications were that his
three Oceanside starters — Rising Legend, Greeley Awesome and Joelito (seventh in
the second division) — had come out of the race well.
Rising Legend, imported from England last fall, made his
2013 debut in the Oceanside. Both Rising Legend and Greeley Awesome were ridden
by Julien Leparoux.
“We were a little unlucky in the first half (with Greeley
Awesome),” Sadler remarked. “But (Leparoux) is a really good rider and he got
the bob in this half, so it kind of made up for the first half.”
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