Every once in a while it is OK to wander through the back pages of California racing to appreciate an old friend. One of them comes to mind April 19 at Santa Anita Park, when the Santa Maria Stakes (G2) takes place on a weekend that used to be occupied by Hollywood Park.
In its long life as the Santa Maria Handicap, the main track event for older fillies and mares was a stand-alone showcase for some of the nation's finest females. There was a six-furlong version of the Santa Maria during Santa Anita's opening season of 1934, and then, beginning in 1957, it found a home at a mile and one-sixteenth on the main track.
The Santa Maria fell smack in the middle of the great golden age of North American mares that took up most of the decade from 1966-1975. Natashka, winner of the 1966 Alabama Stakes, won the Santa Maria the following winter. From 1968-1973, the race was won by three-time champion and Hall of Famer Gamely, champion and Hall of Famer Dark Mirage, two-time champion and Hall of Famer Gallant Bloom, champion Turkish Trousers, and three-time champion and Hall of Famer Susan's Girl.
Convenience, the 1974 winner of the Santa Maria, was neither a champion nor a Hall of Famer. All she did was defeat champion Typecast in their $250,000 1972 match race at Hollywood Park—at the time the richest head-to-head Thoroughbred race ever run in North America.
Champion Glorious Song won the 1981 Santa Maria under 127 pounds. Fran's Valentine, winner of the 1985 Kentucky Oaks (G1), took the Santa Maria two years later at age 5. In 1985, Laffit Pincay Jr. considered retirement after his wife, Linda, committed suicide. After taking time away from riding, his first winner upon his return was aboard Adored in the Santa Maria.
The Santa Maria became a grade 1 race in 1990 and stayed that way until 2010. To celebrate the occasion, Ron McAnally won the 1990 running with two-time champion and Hall of Famer Bayakoa. In 1992, he won again with two-time champion and Hall of Famer Paseana. The trainer came right back in 1993 with Race the Wild Wind, who'd won the Fantasy Stakes (G2) the year before.
McAnally missed by a nose with Paseana in the 1994 Santa Maria, but made up for it in 1995 with Queens Court Queen, a daughter of Lyphard who won two other graded stakes at that winter meet. McAnally then greeted a new century with Lovellon, the first of three Santa Maria victories for owner Gary Tanaka.
You don't need to have a mare from South America to win the Santa Maria, but it helps. Since 1990, Argentina has supplied not only Bayakoa, Paseana, and Lovellon, but also Tanaka's two-time winner Star Parade. Chile contributed India Divina, trained by Chilean Eduardo Inda, and Great Hot came from Brazil, as did her trainer, A.C. Avila.
Which brings us to the 2025 running of the Santa Maria Saturday, topped by the Chilean mare Richi, who deserves to be favored because she almost won the B. Wayne Hughes Beholder Mile Stakes (G1) last time out. Bob Baffert does not get many South Americans, and this one is choice, sporting six wins and two seconds in her first eight starts back home before trying the boys in the Chilean St. Leger (G1) going 11 furlongs.
Phil D'Amato will try to upset the favorite with Sun Of Hill, who has yet to win in the United States after an impressive record in her native Brazil, where she won two stakes, including the Henrique de Toledo Lara (G1) and placed in three others. Sun Of Hill stumbled at the beginning of her last start on turf and still finished a closing third. It could be her time.
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Speaking of Santa Maria, that was a Hail Mary tossed by backers of fair meets this summer at fairgrounds in Pleasanton and Ferndale at the California Horse Racing Board meeting April 17 at Cal Expo, in Sacramento. Both applications were shot down cold, which was no real surprise, since the Northern California fair circuit was pretty much given up for dead after the California Authority of Racing Fairs got out of the racing business earlier this year.
The Pleasanton application for dates in late June and early July was backed by the wealthy breeders George Schmitt and John Harris, who pledged $2 million in support of the brief meet. The failure of the Golden State Racing experiment last fall as a replacement for the defunct Golden Gate Fields soured the board so comprehensively that the motion by vice chairman Oscar Gonzales to approve the application did not even receive a second.
That left Ferndale dangling, yet its people were determined to make a case for their three weekends at the Humboldt County Fair at the end of summer. At least their application got a vote and two yeas, and the issue could be revisited at the next meeting. But the forces aligned in opposition—including 1/ST Racing, Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, and the Thoroughbred Owners of California—had long ago convinced the majority of the commissioners that a single racing circuit in Southern California was the only solution to the state's economic woes.
What seems continually forgotten in moaning about those woes is how the state got to this point. The first and very large domino to fall was Golden Gate Fields, shuttered by the Canadian company 1/ST Racing in order to consolidate its California operations and funnel simulcast revenue to its Santa Anita flagship track during the former Golden Gate dates. Northern California interests trying to retain some semblance of a circuit did not go down without a fight, but in the end the die was cast.
Bill Nader of the TOC suggested at the meeting that California's retreat to a three-track circuit in the south was in keeping with a trend of consolidation seen in many places across the land. He is right, and the pattern is clear.
As noted, California's consolidation in the south was preordained when 1/ST Racing shuttered Golden Gate Fields in June of 2024 without announcing any kind of sale or development plans.
The Stronach Group, from which was spawned 1/ST Racing, closed and sold Portland Meadows in 2019, eliminating Oregon's only major track. In Maryland, 1/ST Racing cut a deal with the state to sell Pimlico Race Course for a dollar in return for Laurel Park, which would be closed for development, effectively "consolidating" the sport to a single track.
And in Florida, the ongoing legislative battle to decouple casinos from racetracks is part of a 1/ST Racing strategy to close and sell Gulfstream Park for development, leaving only Tampa Bay Downs as the survivor of a consolidated racing landscape.
