Where the Turf Meets the Surf

By Harley Walden

IN May 1936, in the aftermath of the American Depression, a hastily convened meeting took place at the Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank, California.

It was fronted by the legendary Bing Crosby along with Pat O’Brien and Oliver Hardy of Laurel and Hardy fame.

Gary Cooper, fresh from a successful premiere of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, was present and the whole of Warner Bros. boardroom was packed with movie industry blue bloods.

The reason for the gathering, however, had nothing to do with movies.

These gentlemen were gathered along with William A. Quigley, an ex-footballer, a visionary with a nose for business.

He had his eye on the fairgrounds in Del Mar, near San Diego, and he sensed a certain potential.

The area bordered the Pacific Ocean and had exhibition facilities, a mile course for different equine stunts and provisional stands.

It was by no means an impressive establishment, but its location and surroundings were ideal for Quigley’s purposes, and he was given a verbal promise to lease the area for 10 years.

The architects were given a free hand and to the initial idea of the Spanish colonial style, they began to add elements of Venice and Versailles including canals, lagoons and formalistic gardens.

Soon enough the money was gone.

Unfazed, Crosby and O’Brien borrowed against their insurances and each lent $600,000 interest free to the project. The architects however no longer had a free hand.

 

Quigley was intimately connected to the events in Arcadia, California, where in 1934 Santa Anita Park had reopened to the public thanks to initiative of film mogul Hal Roach.

That track had developed into a major success with the Santa Anita Handicap, aka The Big Gap, as its main attraction.

The Santa Anita meetings were held during the winter, and Quigley planned to fill the space between those winter meetings with a summer meeting at Del Mar.

At that time, Southern California was thinly populated and mainly considered a place for summer holidays.

The Del Mar project more or less depended on the Santa Anita crowd being willing to travel 60 miles to the new track.

On July 3, 1937, the track opened for business, but the stables and paddock were makeshift arrangements.

The employees had difficulties finding their way around the area and had to take measures to avoid the wet paint on most surfaces.

Still, the horses were in place and so were the new boys.

Crosby himself was at the turnstiles to greet the first fans through the gates.

An estimated 15,000 spectators turned up that first day.

Crosby, Quigley and O’Brien held court, Hardy was honorary official, all agreed Del Mar was a success.

An innovation that became a game changer for the entire sport was debuted that day.

Prior to the grand opening, Crosby contacted Lorenzo del Riccio, an optical engineer for the research department of Paramount Pictures, and commissioned him to develop a photo finish camera.

He installed the camera at the cost of $300,000, which was an enormous amount of money at that time.

When the crowd of 18,000 turned over close to a quarter of a million dollars on the second day, everybody thought big time racing had come to stay at Del Mar.

The heady days didn’t last, however. Del Mar averaged 5000 visitors for the remainder of the 22-day meet.

The weak point in Quigley’s project was of a logistic nature.

The trip from Los Angles was a pain: the trains went slow, the roads were bad and regular flights were non-existent.

The financial aspect aside, the atmosphere was good at Del Mar in the summer of 1937.

The environment was pleasing, the sounds of the Pacific Ocean’s waves were pleasing, the life-style was easy going and relaxed and the word had it that only the horses were in a hurry at Del Mar.

The attraction of the presence of Hollywood stars at Del Mar races cannot be overestimated.

Still it took the two four-legged stars to spread the track’s appeal nationwide in its second year.

Charles S. Howard had one of the most successful stables in America, and the legendary Seabiscuit was its star.

Howard’s son, Lin, had a racing stable with Crosby under the name Binglin Stables. They had imported an Argentinian top performer by the name of Ligaroti, and Quigley suggested a match race between the two horses.

Seabiscuit and his tremendous fighting spirit, was the darling of American racing and had been named the 1937 Champion Handicap Male.

He had, however, disdainfully lost two “Big Caps” and now rumour had it, he was not quite the same anymore.

Howard was of a different opinion and challenged his son to a side bet, his $15,000 against his son’s $5’000.

The press monitored the race like a title match, and the news teams loaded their film cameras. From the roof of the grandstand, Crosby and O’Brien commented on the event to a nationwide radio audience.

An estimated crowd of 20,000, many sporting paraphernalia for their pick in the $25,000 winner-take-all event, showed up for the race.

Seabiscuit was ridden by George “Ice Man” Woolf and the South American horse by Noel “Spec” Richardson.

Race riding at this time was no Sunday School event and this race was no exception.

Seabiscuit was in front coming around the final turn, but Richardson grabbed his saddlecloth at the top of the stretch and later went for Woolf’s wrist.

Reports claim that in retaliation Woolf grabbed Ligaroti’s bridle about 20 yards from the wire and didn’t let go until the race was over. Richardson later said Woolf was whipping Ligorati, which is why he grabbed his wrist.

To this day, no one quite knows exactly what happened, except that it was a roughly run race to say the least.

It is known that the crowd loved the spectacle.

In the end, Seabiscuit held on by a nose and shaved four seconds off the track record in the process, even though he was carrying 130 lbs to Ligaroti’s 115 lbs.

The stewards, however, were livid and declared the race void and warned off both Richardson and Woolf.

It took a while of negotiating before the result was allowed to stand and the jockeys got away with a one week suspension each.

Even if the jockeys were not the best of friends after the race, the atmosphere at the track was electric.

Quigley’s brainchild of a match race combined with Crosby’s wide network had made Del Mar known from coast to coast.

In the second year Del Mar was a success based on media coverage, crowds and betting over the next couple of seasons hardly made the shareholders dance in the streets.

The net profit for 1939 landed them a modest $69. The real economical breakthrough had to wait until 1941, when the Pacific Highway (US 101) had been expanded and the air traffic to San Diego was intensified.

Everything came to a halt, however, in December 1941 when the United States entered the Second World War.

Between 1942 and 1944, the track was closed and the grounds were initially used for training the United States Marine Corps, then as a manufacturing site for pats to B-17 bombers.

Del Mar was back in business as a racetrack in July 1945, but without Quigley, who had passed away after a short time of bad health.

A crowd of more than 20,000 turned up on the reopening day, and the rest of the year was a formidable success.

The upward trend continued the next year and after nine years Crosby and O’Brien at last had their investments back.

Crosby left the board, and he was soon followed by O’Brien.

After this it was not the same anymore, and the whole thing floundered with a sigh in 1960s as the track had passed through six different ownership groups.

Then in 1968, the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club was formed and retains the lease on the track to this day.

The horses that put Del Mar on the map went on to greater things, Seabiscuit headed east, where he trounced War Admiral in an epic match race at Pimlico and was named 1938 Horse of the Year.

He capped off his career by winning the Santa Anita Handicap at long last in 1940.

Ligaroti won the Del Mar Handicap but like Seabiscuit was a disappointment in the breeding barn.

Bing Crosby visited the track one last time in 1977, he died of a heart attack the following year.

But the style and the spirit he created at Del Mar still lives on.

The Bing Crosby Stakes, which was inaugurated in 1946, is run to this day and is a Grade 1 race.

Pat O’Brien kept his movie carrier alive until in 1983, like his old partner in crime, he died of a heart attack.

He too has a race named after him at Del Mar, a Grade 2 event first held in 1986.

Today, Del Mar is revered as one of America’s iconic tracks, and in 2014, it was announced the Breeders’ Cup World Championships, one of Thoroughbred racing’s most prestigious international events, would be held there for the first time in November 2017.

Next year, the world’s best will gather at the timelessly beautiful track at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, or as it says in Bing Crosby’s memorable song, “Where the Turf Meets the Surf”.