Horse racing fans get the holiday gift they really want by waiting until the day after Christmas when the Southern California winter racing season celebrates its traditional Dec. 26 opening day at Santa Anita Park. That date marks the start of a new meet and kicks off one of the country’s premier annual winter racing seasons.

SoCal racing’s six-month 2023-’24 stand at “The Great Race Place” will continue on a four-days-a-week basis, Thursdays through Sundays plus holidays, until June 16. The Santa Anita season is actually two meets. The main winter-spring “Classic Meeting” runs until April 7. Then, the season continues with Santa Anita’s spring meet the rest of the way.

Santa Anita will host several big days of racing and wagering, including a Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap day that includes the Grade 2 San Felipe Stakes and Grade 1 Kilroe Mile Stakes on March 2, and Santa Anita Derby day on April 6. It all gets started with one of the biggest race days of the year on opening day with six graded stakes races topped by three Grade 1s.

Leading Santa Anita Jockeys

Juan Hernandez after winning 2023 Shoemaker Mile. (Eclipse Sportswire)

Santa Anita will feature one of its most interesting jockey colonies in recent years at this season’s meet. The race for the Santa Anita Classic Meeting jockey title through April 7 should come down to three leading riders at the meet, Juan Hernandez, Flavien Prat, and Joel Rosario. Hernandez just won the Del Mar fall riding title with 21 wins to Prat’s 19 and was the runaway leading jockey at both of the last two Santa Anita winter meets. Hernandez will look to equal or exceed last year’s 63 wins from 254 mounts (25%). He also added a Santa Anita-best 42 more wins at the April-May-June portion of the meet.

Prat, in addition to finishing second at Del Mar, was second leading rider at last year’s Santa Anita Classic Meeting with 31 wins (18%). Rosario will return to ride full time at the Santa Anita winter meet for the first time since the 2018-’19 season when he finished as that meet’s second leading rider behind Prat with 58 wins (25%).

The other big-name jockey at the meet will be veteran Frankie Dettori, who decided to postpone his retirement plans in order to ride year-round in SoCal this year. Dettori was third-leading rider at last year’s Santa Anita Classic Meeting with 26 wins from 144 mounts (18%). Other leading riders this season should include Umberto Rispoli, Edwin Maldonado, Antonio Fresu, Hectos Isaac Berrios and, of course, Hall of Famer Mike Smith, who won’t take enough mounts to contend for the riding title but instead will pick and choose his mounts and very likely win at a good percentage throughout the season.

Three riders that won a bunch of races at Santa Anita last winter, Ramon Vazquez (Oaklawn Park), John Velazquez (Gulfstream Park), and Joe Bravo (Gulfstream Park), will be riding elsewhere this season.

Santa Anita Top Trainers

In the trainer’s standings, Phil D’Amato is the defending leading trainer at the Santa Anita winter-spring meet and will be going for his fourth meet title in a row after leading last year with 32 wins (18%). Bob Baffert won 27 races from only 99 starters last season and led all trainers with 20 or more starters in winning percentage at 27%. Doug O’Neill (26 wins, 16%), Mark Glatt (23 wins, 21%), and Steve Knapp (23 wins, 19%) were next in the standings. Former Santa Anita leading trainer Peter Miller returned from a hiatus at last year’s meet to win 13 races (15%). He should do better at this season’s meet.

George Papaprodromou and John Sadler can be expected to start more than 100 runners at the meet and should win at good percentages. Richard Baltas just completed a one-year suspension on Dec. 8 and is also gearing up a stable for Santa Anita. The last time Baltas competed at this meet was 2021-’22 when he won 24 races from 164 starters for 15%.

Santa Anita Main Track Trends

Let’s get to know the Great Race Place by taking a quick look at some prevailing biases at the Santa Anita in various kinds of races based on the statistics from the same meet last year.

Fans check out the horses at Santa Anita. (Penelope P. Miller/America's Best Racing)

In terms of running style preferences and the winning track profile on the main track, speed tends to do very well in all sprints, especially at 5 ½ furlongs where 73% of the winners (16 of 22) raced on or close to the pace, within 1.5 lengths of the lead at the first call. At the most commonly run dirt sprint distance of six furlongs, speed was less dominant than at 5 ½ furlongs, but still very good with 58% of the winners (63 of 108) racing on or close to the pace. Only 14 winners in 108 races (13%) at six furlongs were closers that raced four or more lengths off the pace. At 6 ½ furlongs and seven furlongs, horses on or close to the pace won at nearly identical percentages as at six furlongs with 58% front-runners winning at 6 ½ furlongs (30 of 52), and 57% winning front-runners at seven furlongs (13 of 23).

Horses that race on or close to the lead tend to enjoy a tactical advantage at all distances on the main track and this also includes routes. In 127 route races run at Santa Anita at the corresponding meet last year, 70 winners raced on or close to the pace (55%) encompassing leaders and pressers. Horses racing four or more lengths off the pace won only 11 of 127 routes for only 9%, and nine of those were at a mile. Just two closers coming from more than four lengths behind won races in routes longer than a mile at last year’s meet.

In terms of post positions on the Santa Anita main track, inside posts 1-3 and middle posts 4-6 tend to perform similarly well in dirt sprints. There is a drop-off noted outside of post-position 6, but it’s not hugely important since Santa Anita dirt routes at this meet average 6.81 runners per race. In dirt route races, horses from the inside posts 1-3 did the best, yielding winners in 69 of the 127 dirt routes (54%), while horses that drew posts 7 and outward won only 7 of the 127 races (6%). Keep in mind, however, that Santa Anita’s dirt routes averaged only 6.15 runners per race so the opportunities were quite limited.

Santa Anita Turf Tips

When it comes to grass racing, Santa Anita’s turf course is home to some of the country’s best over the winter. The Santa Anita turf course generally plays very fairly to all running styles and running paths, but there can be exceptions such as in fall 2022 when horses from the rail in turf routes went only 3-for-47 and the best posts were clearly posts 2-6.

In turf routes, horses are routinely able to win races on or close to the lead (38% for horses within 1.5 lengths of the lead at the first call with 27% wire-to-wire winners), or from various margins off the pace. Stalkers at last year’s meet won 36% and closers coming from more than four lengths off the pace won 26%.

Downhill turf course at Santa Anita. (Eclipse Sportswire)

In terms of post positions in turf routes, the inside and middle posts were all very effective, with horses drawn 1-3 winning 47% of the 143 races last season and posts 4-6 winning 40% of the races. Horses drawn outside of post-position 6 won just 20 of the 143 races.

Santa Anita runs turf sprints at 6 ½ furlongs on its signature downhill course, as well as flat turf sprints from its newer backstretch turf sprint chute at 5 ½ furlongs, six furlongs, and 6 ½ furlongs (very rarely at five furlongs). Turf sprints starting on the backstretch favor speed or horses able to stay within 1.5 lengths of the lead at the first call with those horses winning 65 of 123 flat turf sprints run at last year’s meet (53%). Stalkers won 28% and closers won 20%. Inside and middle posts do the best.

In the downhill turf sprints, data collected over years and decades shows that those races favor horses with middle and outside posts while posts 1-2-3 have long been considered disadvantageous. These downhill sprints are generally fair to all running styles, but at the last winter-spring meet it was stalkers that did the best with 17 wins in the 37 races at the meet for 46%.

Have a great season at The Great Race Place and best of luck at Santa Anita!