David Jerkens does not fancy himself the second coming of Walter Vosburgh, or the modern version of Jimmy Kilroe. Those legendary racing secretaries lived in a day when they could play rough with the best horses in their inventories, larding on the weight in handicaps of all shapes and sizes.
Roseben toiled under Vosburgh's heavy thumb for five seasons at the dawn of the 20th century and still managed to win races under 140, 146, and 147 pounds. Vosburgh also was the guy who put 139 pounds on Whisk Broom II for the 1913 Suburban Handicap at Belmont Park. Whisk Broom won by half a length and set a track record.
Kilroe hailed from the same school. He put 134 pounds on Round Table for the 1959 Washington's Birthday Handicap (he floundered on soft ground), then came up with the same number in the 1971 Hollywood Gold Cup for Ack Ack, who won for fun.
Jerkens occupies a similar role as racing secretary at Del Mar, although he labors in a more genteel climate, when handicap weights north of 130 pounds are found only in steeplechase events. But at least Jerkens gets to practice his craft. There have been six significant handicaps run so far this summer at the Del Mar meet. Four have been graded stakes, and two more will be offered Saturday, Aug. 30, as supporting features on a program topped by the $1 million Pacific Classic (G1).
One of those is the Green Flash Handicap (G3T), a five-furlong affair that has become increasingly popular since it became a Win and You're In event on the Breeders' Cup Challenge trail, awarding a fees-paid berth in the Turf Sprint (G1T). With the Breeders' Cup at Del Mar Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, Saturday's version of the Green Flash figures to be fraught with significance. An overflow field of 15 was entered for this 23rd Green Flash, and 12 will run.
Jerkens convenes a racing office committee to compile his handicap weights, and to the surprise of exactly no one, their Green Flash topweight this time around, at 125 pounds, is Anthony Fanticola's two-time defending race winner Motorious. The 7-year-old gelding packed 123 in 2023 and 123 in 2024, so clearly something had to be done to level the playing field.
That 125-pound assignment is two more pounds than the field's second-heaviest, First Peace at 123, and seven pounds more than the lowest assignment. Motorious enters off a season-opening victory in the Daytona Stakes (G3T) on the hillside course at Santa Anita Park.
Motorious has gone from the Green Flash to the Breeders' Cup twice before. Not even Flavien Prat could neutralize their nightmare trip in the 2023 Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint at Santa Anita when they finished fifth, full of run. Last year at Del Mar, with Antonio Fresu aboard, Motorious had better luck and missed by only a neck to the surprising Brit, Starlust.
First Peace has not run since winning the Eddie D. Stakes (G2T) at Santa Anita last September, but he has been working for this as if he means business. Boss Sully will be tough, based on a win on the course and his close second to Think Big in the Turf Sprint Stakes (G2T) at Churchill Downs in May. And all eyes could be on Queen Maxima, whose six wins and two seconds in eight career turf sprints give her a right to finally confront the boys.
Del Mar's slate of eight summer handicaps flies in the face of its neighbor to the north. In the six months of racing presented by Santa Anita, from late December 2024 well into June, there was exactly one major event for which weights were assigned subjectively, rather than generated by prefabricated allowance conditions. That lonesome race was the Santa Anita Handicap, whose identity is so entangled with its weighting format that its nickname, The Big 'Cap, is an indelible part of the track's marketing profile.
"There's pros and cons to handicaps," Jerkens said. "You do expose yourself to some grumbling when you make a particular horse the highweight. But also, in races you think might overfill, you can dictate who's going to get in the field, and get the 12 best into the body of the race.
"With our eight handicaps, we might hear from a couple of connections who think their weight is too high," Jerkens added. "Then again, in a race that's weight-for-age, even though a horse may carry less and should carry more weight, people don't grumble. It's a strange dynamic."
And ever thus. Writing about the legendary racing secretary John Blanks Campbell, Joe Palmer poked fun at the moaning and groaning over handicap weights by owners of champions past.
"Mr. Campbell does not know this," Palmer wrote, "because he wears a hearing aid, and when sobbing about weights breaks out, he turns it off so it will not break his heart. He is a very compassionate man, and he cannot endure sorrow."
Jerkens has his own style.
"My response is, 'I could be off by a pound,'" he said.
On the Green
The Green Flash is named for the atmospheric phenomenon that is best seen on a still, cloudless day when the fiery orange of the setting sun disappears with a goodbye burst of bright green at the ocean's horizon.
In his novel "The Green Ray," Jules Verne describes the flash as " ... a green which no artist could ever obtain on his palette, a green of which neither the varied tints of vegetation nor the shades of the most limpid sea could ever produce the like! If there is a green in Paradise, it cannot be but of this shade, which most surely is the true green of Hope."
To behold a flash is rare, auguring good fortune for the beholder. Literature and film have paid tribute to the flash of green—including a fabulous book by John D. MacDonald and its companion movie—along with an installation of street art at San Diego's Mission Beach, not far from Del Mar.
