Oceanside division winners in good shape

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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