Alexander Payne, the filmmaker responsible for "Election," "Sideways," and "The Holdovers," said something about movies on a recently viewed documentary that could apply to any endeavor striving for some kind of transcendence:
"You just never know that you're living in a Golden Age."
This will be my new go-to retort in conversations with grumpy contemporaries. They bemoan the fact that it is no longer the late 1960s in horse racing, decorated by the likes of Dr. Fager, Buckpasser, and Damascus; or the late 1970s, when Seattle Slew, Affirmed, and Spectacular Bid roamed the land; or the late 1980s, when Sunday Silence and Easy Goer took their rivalry to great heights; or the mid-to-late 1990s, when on any given weekend you could rely on a race that featured a sampling from an all-star menu that included Cigar, Silver Charm, Skip Away, Serena's Song, Victory Gallop, Free House, Sandpit, Silverbulletday, Awesome Again, Tale of the Cat, Gentlemen, and Formal Gold.
Those all were Golden Ages, although at the time the term was not applied. There were expectations that such clusters of equine wonderment would fall periodically from the heavens, and as long as there were races and racetracks to provide an appropriate stage and appreciative crowds, the show would live up to standards assumed by the designation "Thoroughbred racing."
Among the best of those stages has been opening day at Santa Anita Park, better known as December 26. The British call it Boxing Day, a pugnacious title that actually traces to a tradition of presenting gifts to the servants who had to work for their masters on Christmas. Their American cousins turned the 26th into a shopping orgy on the order of Black Friday, which is why Santa Anita's Gate 9 off Baldwin Avenue is always clogged with traffic heading for both the racetrack (left) and the mall.
If there are more cars veering to the mall these days than the track, it is only a sign of the times. But Santa Anita management reported a live crowd one year ago numbering 41,446, which, if accurate, was among the highest recorded since the turn of the century. With clear skies predicted for this Tuesday and a muscle-bound card on tap, there could be that rarest of modern racetrack sightings—a throng.
Will they witness the dawn of a new Golden Age? Well, you just never know when you're living in one. It must be emotionally exhausting, though, for trainers of a certain age—say this side of 50—along with horse owners fairly new to the business to be reminded, over and over again, that they never will see a sport as glorious as it was in (insert decade here), as if they are being assessed some cosmic penalty for arriving too late to a party that has long since petered out.
"Remembrance of things past is not necessarily remembrance of things as they were," wrote Marcel Proust, the Parisian novelist born not far from Longchamp Racecourse, near the Bois de Boulogne. Proust's admonition was echoed more than a century later by the American sociologist Maria Malyk, who wrote, "There exists a treacherous slippery slope, when people actually start believing those rosy dreams of the wondrously charmed past and let those delusions reflect too negatively on their perception of the present."
It must be conceded, however, that all presents in Thoroughbred racing are not created equal. The haves and have-nots among regions find themselves reordered according to secondary income derived from gaming sources. Boom towns like Louisville, Ky., Hot Springs, Ark., and Elmont, N.Y., offer prize money that dwarfs what can be offered at a traditional bastion of wealth like Santa Anita, which sustained a further blow this winter with a 7% trim in daily purses.
Such an imbalance makes the current "age" difficult to evaluate. Leonard Powell, like Proust a pragmatic Frenchman, is coming to the end of a second consecutive year with his Southern California stable earnings in the realm of $2 million, best of his career. And, at just 45, there should be more bests to come.
"Looking back, those were very good years when attendance was tops, and the purse money was very good compared to the cost of living," Powell said. "We're far from that right now, and things are not that easy. There are places doing very well, but in California, unless something can be done to increase the purses, objectively speaking the best years may be behind us."
Powell has entered two fillies in the American Oaks (G1T) on the opening day Santa Anita program, at a mile and a quarter on what figures to be a turf course slightly softened by an early winter storm. Anisette, owned by Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, won the Del Mar Oaks (G1T) and has finished second in her last two starts, both graded, which is more than enough to make her the favorite. Stablemate Grace Period, owned by a partnership that includes Glen Hill Farm, Laura de Seroux, Haras d'Etreham, and Marsha Naify, placed in a minor French stakes and has yet to hit the board in her two United States starts.
The American Oaks began life as a summer highlight of the Hollywood Park season and at its peak sported a $750,000 purse. Santa Anita rescued the race from the closing of Hollywood, but now it is worth less than half, its $300,000 just enough to retain consideration as a grade 1 event.
Relatively young trainers like Powell would seem to be candidates to pick up stakes and move to the money.
"Right now, a lot of my clientele is California-based, and the last few years they've been extremely faithful to me, and I want to be faithful to them," Powell said. "Our barn has been getting better every year, and I'd like to keep that momentum going, even though it's very hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel in California. We're going to need some help.
"But for me, no matter what it will always be a game of passion," Powell added. "That's what keeps me going. Passion for the horses, and sharing that passion with my family."
